1.

  The winter evening shrouded both the city and the apartment in darkness, where the lights were not turned on, and its only inhabitant was enthusiastically sitting at the computer in the company of an exceptionally huge cup of godlessly sweet and sadistically strong coffee, not a bit sad about his loneliness. Igor had such a trait - loss of control over time, tunnel vision in the direction of the current hobby. An empty apartment, dust in the corners, where the young man who was too zy to do a proper cleaning could not reach, and also the silence, broken by the strokes of fingers on the keyboard and a barely audible hum from the headphones. Shooters do not shoot themselves, and he successfully passed the first session of the first year of study with excellent marks. He can afford a little idleness, fortunately, the cushion of gradually thinning finances provided by his retives has not yet completely disappeared. Then again, there is no need to pay the rent. The apartment is his own, even though he did nothing to get it.

  He didn't really remember his parents, who had died in a car accident. Or rather, he remembered them, but those memories were pretty faded. He was about twelve years old then. He had time to recover and forget. Moreover, he hadn't grown up in a boarding school, but under the care of his maternal aunt and her husband, who performed their duties as guardians quite well, since she had taken on the responsibility. The couple had raised him conscientiously and supported him, but you didn't have to be a particurly advanced psychologist to understand the simple fact which they didn't really hide. He was a burden to them, which they didn't really hide.

  Uncle Dmitry and Aunt Veronica were convinced childfree long before it became mainstream. Igor suspected that this couple really slept together in bed. Bohemian, what can you do? He is a teacher at the music conservatory and a pretty good pianist. She is a violinist in an opera orchestra, also quite famous in narrow circles. Both are quite talented, have had the opportunity to go on tour more than once, and not just sit in their hometown, and both lived and breathed their craft. They needed an unwanted parasite about as much as a random dog needs a fifth leg.

  So when Igor turned sixteen, his retives gently but very persistently kicked him out, sending him into the big life. Not with a bare ass, of course. He had a parental apartment that wasn't in the best condition, but it was close to the downtown area, as well as a bank account where the money from renting out the apartment was kept while his retives managed it. Despite the teenage shit seething deep inside him from the fact that he, unloved and unwanted, was being pushed far away from their life, and also asked to call less and visit less often, preferably never at all, the young man understood the situation very clearly. His aunt and her husband did a very, very good thing. He was treated much better than many other orphans who fell into the hands of smartasses retives.

  Only his natural indifference, ability to abstract from irritants, and the character of a complete introvert, for whom the Internet, video games, and books repced most of his communication, saved him. He had a pce to live. There were prospects for entering a university chosen well in advance for free, and some opportunities for part-time work and a financial cushion were present. So what else did he need? So he did not lose heart, quickly completing the quest to study at school, successfully entered, found a part-time job, and generally felt like a great guy. He communicated with his aunt and uncle exactly once a month, with a short call of about three minutes, and all parties were quite happy about it. Only somewhere under his heart that same seething shit gnaws, the desire to be noticed, to be loved, to be one of his own, and not an unnecessary and forcibly imposed element of someone else's cozy little world.

  Usually in such moments, you wanted to turn on some cssic, like DOOM, and spend a long time happily destroying demons with your trusty double-barreled shotgun. Usually he followed this desire, like today, for example. And a session of destroying demons in particurly cynical ways turned into just a gaming session, several games of Call of Duty, and finishing a long-pyed game of Stelris, even though it is not a shooter. If you degrade, then completely, morally, spiritually, and physically, right? So Igor degraded until te at night, only when spots started flickering before his eyes, and a new cup of coffee threatened an attack of tachycardia. Then he turned off the computer and went to take a contrast shower. Because to go to bed in such a state means waking up not only unwashed, but also broken, like a Chinese vase of the Khren dynasty.

  It was at the moment of entering the bathroom This Shit caught up with him, and in a very (un)fortunate way. He tripped and fell at the moment of stepping in. As it was found out ter, the glowing turquoise glow balls, about the size of a ripe grapefruit, appeared all over the world at about five minutes after midnight GMT. He would ter learn that in the very first wave of these orbs, there were not so many, about fifteen thousand, and that they were scattered in handfuls of five to ten pieces over a small area. And these small clusters of five to ten were also clustered in rger concentrations, like the size of a small city. One even conceded that such a characteristic dispersal had provoked the initiated to cooperate... or killing each other up in a brutal and uncompromising battle royal. But that was all much ter, not on this dreary and mencholy lonely winter evening, which quickly ceased to be both dreary and mencholy.

  This evening, for the umpteenth time, Igor caught his slipper on the door sill at the entrance to the bathroom. Only this time he couldn't keep his bance and flew face-first into the tiles, barely managing to put his hands in front of him. And already in the fall, at exactly five minutes after midnight GMT, the very ball appeared right in the path of his fall. Shining, pearlescent, and turquoise at once, hanging in the air and literally beckoning him to touch it. He did, but not with his right hand, not with his left hand trying to grasp the clothes towel hanging on the hook, but with a very fucked-up look on his face. Here he still falls, sincerely hoping not to break or smash anything, and here he finds himself in complete darkness, where a voice, or even a VOICE, greets him as a newly initiated Exalted, informing him that he, Igor, has been successfully initiated as the ninth in the current Seed, and also the first among the Earthlings. And if for the second he was not entitled to any honors, then for his pce in the overall standings and getting into the top ten, he was entitled to certain Benefits.

  A moment more, and he hovered in another darkness, brighter, diluted by the lights of unearthly colors, in which for some reason he saw not stars, but colored stone caskets, altars, or arks, each of which could give him something very serious. And these arks were becoming fewer and fewer, as if some had already been taken away. Apparently, it was not earthlings, but other lucky ones from other worlds, who knew the Seed at the same time as the third pnet from the Sun, but it did not make Igor feel any better. He reached for the arks, grabbing the first, the second, and the third. Three Gifts, three Marks, three Stimuli, that would become the basis of his power, if one believed these vague and at the same time so clear visions, which could not be perceived as mere delirium of consciousness, insidiously struck by ceramic tiles.

  The Great Gift has been acquired: Great Strengthening of the Foundations!

  From initiation, you gain two additional Vessels to those measured by your talent. You will also receive one additional Patch for every third Step taken, not every fifth, and two when closing a Rank. Also, each new Step will grant you one additional Vessel. The probability of gaining a more advanced Lot during the initial initiation has been increased.

  Everyone had to start from the Foundation, both the most insignificant and the truly Great.

  The images sent by this strange non-nonsense were formed into quite understandable words, which at the same time remained not understandable at all, but quite motivating. Still, if you are promised some additional freebies, it is very, very motivating! The first thing to do is to stay away from such freebies, because free cheese can often be tasted only once. Especially if you're a mouse. But as soon as he realized the first of his fucking gifts, his consciousness was once again flooded with a wave of images pouring pure knowledge into his head. What head? He had no body now, only a pure mind, naked and taut as a string, hanging in the incomprehensible darkness, listening to voices outside his head.

  The concept sounded even worse than it initially seemed.

  It sounded very much like a padded ward.

  A Great Gift has been acquired: the Great Talent of Cognition!

  From the moment of initiation, you gain the highest understanding of your Tablets, which will greatly facilitate and accelerate the development and training of such, sometimes by orders of magnitude. The embodiment of the Tablets in a free Patch is greatly simplified, the probability of successful engraving of the Tablets is increased, and the probability of damaging the Patch during engraving or embodiment is significantly reduced. The effect partially extends to other Exalted Ones connected to you by Bonds.

  Everyone is given Talent, some get an ocean, and some don’t get even a drop, but only those who realize that any Talent can dry up if it is not supported by its older sister, whose name is Perseverance, achieve greatness.

  Quotes in the spirit of personal growth courses, but there was no urge to ugh. These images-words wafted something inexpressibly different, not even ancient, because antiquity is at least somehow expinable and comprehensible. No, there was something simply beyond, too different and alien to his understanding, which would have surely given Igor a headache if only he had a head now. Or any other part of the body. If he had an ass now, he was sure that said ass would undoubtedly have a premonition of imminent troubles, a parade of adventures for itself. But these troubles had to be predicted not with the ass, but with pure logic. He had read too much relevant literature not to guess where everything was heading and how it would all end.

  The Absolute Gift has been acquired: the Promise of Salvation and Retribution!

  In the name of one of the Greatest, who called herself Innes Innei, you have gained a shadow from the shadow of her patronage. In the hour of greatest danger, when there is no hope of salvation, and your Fate is predetermined, this gift will touch the threads of Fate, giving a chance where there should be none. But the price for interference will follow. Additional effects are unknown, additional properties are hidden.

  Once caught in a spider's web, you yourself become a web.

  On the one hand, this Gift made the new pyer happy. Not only because of its higher level, in contrast to the two previous ones, but also because of its content, which turned out to be quite intuitive. This is a literal plot armor, damn it! On the other hand, this same gift scared the shit out of him, because what was hidden in it was much stronger, more concentrated than both previous ones combined. And also very tense were the hidden effects and the fact that each activation of the "plot armor" would cost some kind of reverse thrust. Not to mention the fact he only had a chance to activate this armor, a chance, not a guarantee. To believe in himself and his luck in order to quickly die... a very possible sad outcome for Igor. Somehow, it immediately became clear that the best use of this particur gift was not to use it at all.

  Never.

  This thought became the trigger because all three lootboxes, he will not be fined for bsphemy, right, were assimited, absorbed into the essence of Igor, and there was no need to keep the newly-made Exalted in the middle of this strange emptiness any longer. At the st moment, when he was already being pushed out of this pce-state, he perceived a new image, and this time he was sure - this image is one for everyone who touched the ill-fated ball, becoming a memetic and already cliché bearer of the development system.

  Three revolutions of the pnetary body around the star are given to your world to find answers. What will the Seed bring you? Whose will does it carry? What did it really give you, and what were you gifted with? Look for answers on the Inside Out of Reality, in secret messages and whispers of mad prophets, in forgotten halls and decayed scrolls. Look, find, understand, and manage to save at least yourself, or realize that there is no salvation.

  And from beyond the Horizon appeared the all-good Tree and its Branches pierced the Void, and they tore the canvas of Fate.

  And the first Pact was broken, and you were called to answer, without even knowing the question.

  Find out the question, look for it where Reality ends, where dreams and nightmares begin...

  Okay. All righty. He'd thought the st gift had sounded a little ominous, hadn't he? Let's forget that, because he saw the true ominousness now. There was something not just frightening in those words, but something that smelled like the stench of a cold pit of rotten water in which the corpses, the many, many corpses of all those who, like him, had touched those words before, were floating. The promise of some sort of three-year term and a bunch of very unpleasant innuendo. It would be another end-of-the-world prophecy, the kind he'd already missed hearing from any iron. It would have been, but in the conditions of such madness and the arrival of something that could only be called the System (tm), it was somehow impossible to dismiss these words as typical delirium from TV.

  In short, Igor had time not only to realize the images, but also to be quite afraid of what they promised him, but a moment ter, the darkness-not-darkness was gone, the nothingness curled up into a point and disappeared, returning both the usual course of time and the equally usual space. The space in which, for a moment, he was in the middle of a free fall with his face on the tile. And no magic system, glowing orbs and ominous omens helped him to escape the embrace of the heartless bitch Physics.

  "What a beautiful ceiling here..." Igor seemed to notice for the first time that these spots and cracks above his head formed a real kaleidoscope of dancing lights, or, well, the lights were dancing in his head. Who knows. "In the names of gods, demons, and holy sausages, let all this be the result of hitting his head on the tiles, huh?"

  Gods, demons, and all kinds of sausages remained completely deaf to the pleas of a not so simple mortal, so that the very first attempt, not even a word or a gesture, but just a desire, a look into oneself, immediately led to the fact that new inscriptions appeared before the eyes. The inner eye seemed to be slightly covered with interference, not erasing past messages, but as if sending them deeper, into a kind of archive, opening in return what myriads of examples of bad quality literature called the Status of the Character. His eyes looked unseeingly and clearly ahead, the pupils did not move, and the gaze itself was motionless, like a street astronaut who had taken a dose of something that was not kitchen salt. In order to see these inscriptions, eyes were not needed at all, not even a little bit.

  Name: undeserved

  Rank: Knower of the Mystery

  Chosen Lot: Standard Bearer

  Step: 0

  Vessels: 5 (filled: 5)

  Patches (total): 3 (free: 2)

  Blessings: 3 (free: 0): Great Strengthening of the Foundation, Great Talent of Cognition, Promise of Salvation and Retribution

  Essence Modifications: none

  Tablet: Minor Protective Charm

  Understanding: 1/100

  Foundation: Spirit

  Brightness: Dim

  Effect: Creates a protective yer of stable energy that passively protects against minor physical harm, but can burn out in a single burst, reflecting a single significant physical harm, or lesser energy harm. When applied to oneself or a target, it depletes one of the Vessels for ten minutes or half time if applied to oneself. It sts a little over two hours, and cannot be applied to a target more than once.

  Effect: [will be revealed upon mastering 75 units of understanding]

  Effect: [will be revealed upon full understanding of the Tablet]

  Protect me, guard me, keep me, save me...

  It wasn't just inscriptions-images. No, the sensations were many times more psychedelic than just the inscriptions. At that moment, Igor felt his whole body and something else, something intangible, but inseparably connected with that body, deeper and more integral. He felt not only it, but also everything that just a minute earlier in this body and not-body simply did not exist. For him, the inscriptions were not inscriptions in the full sense of the word, but like markers, indicating and highlighting changes in the very depth of the human essence, allowing him to notice these changes, to realize them instantly, not after a dozen years of meditation and introspection, to realize them and immediately start using them at will and discretion.

  Igor felt five hot and icy-cold drops of liquid fme slowly circling the center of his chest, endlessly spiraling closer and closer to the center, but never getting closer. Each droplet was a Vessel. He could empty each of them, waiting for the moment when it would inevitably fill up again, because it was almost impossible to break and destroy them. Only temporarily extinguished. Only to dull a little that light that pervaded his very essence, a dim glow for the time being. It was dim, but pure, not tainted by any evil, and it would be better for him, Igor, not to tarnish it with anything, if he did not want serious consequences.

  A little closer to his head, but outside of it, as if a halo, other intangible companions of his nature circled in a constant and unpredictable rhythm. As if weightless feathers folded into wings. Like golden rings molded from the rays of the Sun and forged by the Moon. Like invisible doors that lead to pces where mortals cannot go and where one can only peek with the edge of the eye for the time being. To look in order to see a part of the Mysteries lurking behind the doors. To see and hope that you will be able not only to experience what you see but also to understand and make some use of it. These two doors are closed, though not locked, though not tightly, but still closed, and he does not know what is behind them. Unknowable because there, behind the doors, could be anything. The outcome is uncertain and cannot be predicted. The third door, the only door, is already open and sealed, and there, instead of a door, you can see a Tablet blocking the passage, written in symbols that make your head buzz and your very essence ache. Symbols that add up to something else, something impossible by the ws of physics, logic, or common sense. Something that was the embodied Mystery, something he had not even known, something born of his desires and his own Lot.

  This construction, which the inscriptions called the Tablet, not only gave him access to what could not be called anything other than magic, but also protected him. An open door to the Mystery not only gives a chance to understand it. It is also destructive to the fragile mind and essence of the human being. The Tablet filters the images and echoes of the Mystery, refracts them with a huge mystical lens, draws out separate concepts and forms a magical skill, primitive and simple in comparison to what is the Mystery. Primitive enough that a frail little man can understand the Tablet, accept it, and little by little, unhurriedly and persistently, digest the knowledge, realize the Mystery, increasing the degree of understanding... and, if everything is done correctly, if one is able to hold on to the echo of the Mystery, the Tablet will also undergo evolution, it will become not so dim, its radiance will become brighter.

  If the reserve of forces for unscientific and anti-physical activities was hidden near the sor plexus, if the Patchs and the Tablets seemed to form a halo or a ring of doors around the head, the essence of the Lot existed somewhere along the spine. The Lot, as the same VOICE that pyed the role of compulsive learning, said, you could not ignore even if you wanted to, was determined from a variety of avaible options, but solely on the basis of who you were, what you wanted, what you lived, where and what you aspired to. The same Lot simplified the acceptance and drawing of the first Tablet, filling in the Patch without the direct participation of the Exalted One. Actually, all your experience, all your desires, all your passions became the fuel and at the same time the spark that ignites the wall of fire, covering your mind from the Mystery, allowing you to fill the Patch without any effort at all. A one-time gift, which is unreal to repeat, if we believe the images and feelings from the reference-Status.

  The st part of the Status, the Gifts or Blessings, was not felt at all, as if they were at a much deeper level of understanding. Without the presence of the Status, he would not have been able to realize their presence, even if he meditated on his own navel in the middle of a monastery in the mountains of Tibet for a hundred thousand years. Even with the presence of the marker-indicator, he could see the inscriptions-images from the Status, but he could not feel his three gifts with his personal touch. Neither could he figure out if there was any chance of getting another slot for the Blessing. On the one hand, Igor had obviously been gifted quite generously, otherwise, his gifts would not be called Great or Absolute. But the unpleasant thing was that now, to all appearances, he would not earn anything of his own as a gift. There's nowhere to put the new iny. And you can't buy it for a despicable donation, although in this case, Igor would have paid for it without a second thought, even with his financial cushion.

  It seemed to him that he had been studying himself for hours, but in fact only a few minutes had passed. He hadn't even had time to freeze lying on the extremely cold tile. With a groan, he gets to his feet, checks the integrity of his teeth and nose, turns on the light, and stares angrily at his reflection in the mirror. His shoulder hurts, but it's nothing, but he can't hide the gorgeous bruise on half his face. At most, he will be able to bulshit that he fought with the gopota, defending his old touchscreen Android from the change of the owner, having won a great victory as a novice Standard Bearer. Mm-hmm, wow, eh! A Standard Bearer, damn! Not a mage, not a fighter, and not a lurker rough, but a buffer, a support character first and foremost. He could be indignant, but the fact remained. He couldn't go against himself, and he acknowledged the justice of the Lot. He couldn't help but acknowledge it.

  In MMORPGs, he preferred to py mostly as active DDs, but in real life, he preferred to avoid conflict, not fight directly, and maintain normal retions with everyone at once and no one in particur. Merge with the crowd, become part of it, find a competent superior or leader, and then silently do his part of the job, getting paid accordingly. Well, and, of course, not to work with assholes, but this is a mandatory skill for any type of personality, especially if you are an asshole yourself. And the first skill is literally a dream come to life, an opportunity to protect himself and ward off danger. You can't argue with the fact that this trick will suit him, who is always avoiding conflict, perfectly.

  Coming out of the bathroom, Igor covers his eyes for a moment, turning to the depth of his essence, touching the marvelous inscriptions and engravings on the Tablet, and then pulls one of the Vessels to this sensation, pouring it over the Tablet. The sensation was as if an icy and red-hot thread had spiraled from the outermost Vessel, traveling through the entire body but not moving. Igor was enveloped in a warm bnket that warmed not his body, but the intangible part of it, and then came the feeling of the promised protection. It was like a thin film, a protective screen around his body, weightless, not constraining his movements, insensible, at the same time thin but ready to gather in a single point to repel a blow.

  "Shit, if I'm crazy, I'm going to lose my fingers in an epic manner." Igor shrugged and took hold of the knife, then ran it sharply over the pads of his fingers, four at a time. There should be no important veins and vessels there. "Wow. Nevertheless. Even wow."

  In spite of the indifference in his tone, Igor was stunned in a way he had never been before. The bde felt as if it had slid across slippery, oiled gss. He felt that one or two good blows would break through that defense, but those blows still had to be delivered. And how could they be delivered if a direct poke just flowed away, taking the attack as gently as possible? At the same time as he was trying to cut his fingers, palm, hand, and the veins in his forearm, he was listening to his inner gut, assessing the barrier that was losing its strength. And had to admit that “meaningful damage” within his System wasn't measured by a couple of cuts, but by pistol bullets. Or maybe not only pistol bullets, yes.

  The drowsiness that had pgued him before receiving the system was not just gone, it was gone completely. And how could he sleep with all this fun? The knife was quickly repced by a rolling pin and a meat mallet. They performed only slightly better than a kitchen knife. Yes, the area of impact was rger, so the protection was more heavily loaded, but still the damage slipped to the side as it passed by. And yes, he needed a new rolling pin. And that dent in the table would have to be covered somehow. The frozen young man listened to the silence of the night, but even if that rumble had woken someone up, no one had time to figure out who had organized the wake-up call in the middle of the night. In the end, after the seventh full-fledged blow of the hammer, the barrier of the protection finally disintegrated and only slightly slowed down the blow, not taking it away, but, fortunately, there were no injuries, only another bruise.

  He realized that he could activate protection not only on himself, but also on other objects. And he had as many as five charges. While he was having fun, the first Vessel in the spiral had time to move from the end to the beginning of that spiral and refill with power. But not any, as. His attempt to cover the table only ended with him wasting the Vessel's charge. A drop of power fell on the Tablet, but only a barely discernible haze fshed around the table, like a desert mirage in the heat, but nothing more. Apparently, the target had to be alive, not just a target. For the first time in his life, he regretted having so thoroughly exterminated the cockroaches in his apartment! A search for any insect had yielded no results, except for the dust he had collected on himself, which the newly hung protection did not protect against.

  He managed to look out the window and saw the dog digging in the bin, so he tried to activate the protection again. It was hard this time, and he felt the power of his super-skill straining, stretching like a string, but it didn't break. The dog, which Igor's magic had reached, jumped, whined, barked, and began to run in circles, rolling in the wet and dirty snow, but, having failed to lose the strange sensations, calmed down and began to dig in the rubbish bin. It would have been comical if someone had decided to kick the dog at that moment, but in the middle of the night, there was no one like that. It was lucky that the light from the sign of the convenience store was shining on the dog, otherwise, he wouldn't have noticed it, and he didn't know how to apply protection blindly. After thinking about it, Igor turned away from the window and tried to apply the protection blindly, knowing only roughly where the dog was.

  It didn't work, just as it wouldn't work to make the upstairs neighbour happy, though Igor didn't even try. But he managed to remove the amulet from the dog, simply by wishing, pulling his energy back through the same thread that bound him and the animal. The energy didn't come back all the way, and it was tainted and liquid, so he didn't even try to pour it into the Vessel, letting it dissipate outward. His instincts were screaming that an attempt to take back the power that had passed through the Tablet would be fraught not with injury or a fate worse than death, but with unpleasant sensations with no useful result at all. So he worked until dawn, trying to injure himself or to put a protection on the remote control of the TV that hadn't been switched on for over a year. It was dawn, people started to get ready for work, and Igor saw in the mirror his completely unhealthy look, full of burning enthusiasm, and decided to slow down a little.

  This time he didn't brew coffee, choosing instead a sweet and cold soda, because his body was burning hot from the continuous activity. And the regur emptying of at least one vessel also brought some strain, though not physical, but mental. Sitting on the window sill, sipping a Coke and yawning, he gnced at the people going about their business, wondering how many of them were just like him. Those who had become Exalted, who had learnt the Mystery. It was not for nothing that he had been told in that darkness-not-darkness that they preferred to pnt the worlds with shining spheres in bunches, so that the ‘pyers’ could find a company, despite the initially tiny number of spheres? The only question is how big these bunches are - two or three glowing spheres, or a hundred or two at once? And the exact differentiation of this heap is also important - in one house, one neighbourhood, one street?

  So many questions, so many candidates, and you have to find the answers yourself. There was even a separate system message about it. The one threatening something terrible in three years. That is, in less than three years. It was as if a countdown clock had appeared in front of his inner eye. He could call it up and see it at any time, reminding himself how much time he had left. Or to the world. The clock seemed like a familiar digital timer, turned mechanical dial, a simple hourgss, or even the sight of leaves gradually falling from a tree. The design was top-notch, and they'd thrown in some skins. Igor was even a little ashamed of the fact that he preferred to set the image of the clock as a cssic timer, and then shoved it deeper into his consciousness.

  So, who of those around him is like him now? And are there any of them around at all? Maybe he is the only one in this ‘sowing heap’? There, Mikhal Mikhalych came out of the entrance, smoking a cigarette, throwing a cigarette butt past the trash can, having previously smoked the whole stairwell, spitting in the melted snow with his usual foul nguage and starting up his ‘swallow’ to go to the factory he disliked. Where everything has been plundered so that an honest worker can't even steal anything, and they've also put up cameras, faggots. Mikhal Mikhalych generally liked to whine on this subject, and he loved the word ‘’faggots‘’ too. He could pronounce it in hundreds of intonations, each with its connotation. A minute ter, a very bright blonde with a very pretty face, a nice figure, and sensual lips walked out of the neighbouring entrance on high heels. Only her lips were curled into a disgruntled grimace, and her blonde hair was dyed, and her lips were pumped up. Igor was not sure about the figure. He had never spoken to Albina, and she, living happily as a sugar daughter with some sugar daddy, had never spoken to him.

  Maybe Mikhail had become an outstanding metallurgical magician, able to turn the machinery into an iron golem and wind up all sorts of Petrovichs on the shaft? Or will Albina stop yelling at the pigeon that bombed on the bonnet of her little Ford, instead shooting the bird down with a targeted fire arrow? Will a vaguely familiar drunkard wandering off to some unknown pce turn out to be a future great alchemist, transmuting alcohol from water with the touch of a finger? The father, taking his daughter to kindergarten, who is also recognisable only by face and not by name, will call an eagle and fly to throw a ring into the volcano? A woman of forty, dressed in a fitted coat, would not get into her foreign car, but would simply take off into the air and fly to her office to scold out her subordinates? The st thought made him ugh a little, because Igor had been to the w firm where Elizaveta Albertovna, a neighbour three floors up, worked. So he knew that she knew how to scold even without the skill of magic flight.

  The neighbour, who was regurly the object of fantasies of both pubescent teenagers and grown men of the whole house, and at the same time his mother's friend, who had helped her orphaned scker son several times for old memories, gnced squeamishly at the homeless man rummaging in the rubbish, got into her car and left on business. The rest of the likely candidates for magical talents disappeared little by little, being swallowed up by the streets of the city. Not the rgest, but still a fair half a million popution, not counting all sorts of unregistered migrants. This thing, a true heroic raid boss, could digest not only a handful of freshly fledged mages in its womb, but all of Hogwarts as well. Especially if you went to the worst neighbourhoods, where wizards would get their staffs sawed off quickly. Well, or a broom will be taken away a little. There are their own wizards, able to make the purse disappear, and a bck eye will appear.

  Yawning, Igor once again realised how much the normality outside the window was throwing him off. Hello, dudes, magic is here, the system, pumping, glowing balls in the bathtubs are self-generating, the End of the World is coming, and you're going to work! It was good that he didn't need to go anywhere yet. He could at least get some sleep, because he seemed to have overestimated his organism, having managed to have a marathon of training on adrenaline. He'd have to eat first, though, because going to bed on an empty stomach after so many cups of coffee and sodas.... he won't risk it until he has access to the healing spells.

  So, munching on the hot sandwiches, minimal ingredients, a few minutes in the oven, but hearty, tasty, and damned unhealthy, he continued to stare out the window, for the first time in a while going all the way to the bottom. In the sense that he was emptying all five Vessels at once, one by one, on a rollback. And all thanks to the flying rats, which were bombing pigeons: fed by a kind-hearted and weak-minded grandmother from the neighbouring high-rise building, they were in the yard in commercial quantities. And they also started flying and darting around so ridiculously when they were sealed with the amulet that he was involuntarily tempted to smile. It was especially funny when one such fluttering pigeon decided to mash Borisv Genadievich - to the extreme, a mature yard cat, capable of suppressing any opponent with just an aura of seriousness. And here, this mighty cat got into trouble. He was throwing himself at the stupid bird, but could not hurt it. The pigeon slipped out of his grasp, as if oiled, losing, however, the charge of protection. It spent its charge even more quickly on small pigeons than on rger dogs.

  Soaked to the skin with bour sweat, realising that further training was no longer training, but pure self-harm, Igor rinsed himself under a contrast shower almost falling asleep under it, threw off his clothes, pulled on his pyjamas, closed the windows and passed out even before he buried his face in his pillow. Just before he fell into bed, he looked at his Status again, successfully assessing his progress. And while the Step had not changed a whit and had no development scale, the Tablet's cognition line had added imaginary divisions. This sight not only comforted him, but also pleased him, because what kind of pyer would be so alternatively gifted that he would refuse a quick progression? Especially in a game where there are no save points, and by the time of the super event, you'd need to feel the force. Even if you're not Luke or even Rey.

  Understanding: 7/100

  And it's a accelerated pumping, damn it! Many times, an order of magnitude accelerated! If the rest of his colleagues are even worse off, then they won't be archmages by the end of the three-year term. Well, or he initially trains incorrectly, which cannot be ruled out either. With this thought, he was taken in his arms by sleep, covering him with a pile of vague and gloomy images that portended something bad. It was possible, even very probable, that Igor had simply allowed himself to show his typical suspiciousness. But to some part of him it seemed, even if it only seemed, that in the dream his consciousness had a somewhat clearer view of the process of approaching something that had been so diligently promised to him. He wanted to chase such conjectures away from him, chase them away with a broom, turning over on the other side, wrapping himself more warmly and trying to see a normal dream.

  Only that dream didn’t come.

  * * *

  "Oh, young man, you're making a big mistake, but I won't discourage you, I've said it all." Professor Kadilo, as he was called, Our Father by the students for his staunch atheism, looked at Igor somewhat judgmentally. "If you only knew how many of such people I saw..... The first year of study is hard, difficult, but it is the easiest. You can get used to it, and having gotten used to it, you can continue to study. But if you take a sabbatical... Oh, what am I talking about? Take the documents and get out of my sight."

  Igor only nodded silently. He agreed with everything the dean had said one hundred percent. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have gone off on his own. Unless they put a gun to the back of his head. He liked the university, his studies, and student life too. Even if he didn't participate much in it. But it was hard to combine his studies and constant, continuous development of his superpowers, as well as the upcoming event, which looked suspiciously like a harbinger of the Apocalypse. And so he decided not to bring it to a critical state, preferring to silently apply, freeing up time. There are reserves of money, half a year to a year, he will still hold out and understand the most basic points of pumping. If he were lucky, he would also find a job, so he could use his only and gradually progressing magical skill unnoticed.

  Understanding: 21/100

  The growth of the scale of understanding was not only reted to numbers, on the contrary. It was a number that reflected the degree of, well, understanding. Or even UNDERSTANDING. He felt better and better the flow of power from the Vessel to the Tablet, and then from it, outward, when this flow passes through the lens and breaks into fractions forming the structure of the magic protection. Each unit on the scale doesn't just make it closer to the Tablet's new effect, it also strengthens the Tablet itself. For five full days of incessant training, Igor not only ate all the supplies in the fridge, not only got used to being tired like a dog, but also strengthened his protection. Purely mathematically strengthened. Where before he had broken through his invisible shield in five to seven blows with a meat hammer (or rather, not broken through, but brought it to a state where the next blow would destroy it. He was not an idiot to mutite himself), but now it took from ten to fourteen blows. And each next unit of understanding gave more than even a couple of previous ones.

  However, he conducted experiments fraught with injuries and self-mutition not only on himself, but also on three hamsters bought at the pet store. The animals smelled unpleasant, and he had to spend time caring for them and buy some hamster food. But on them he perfectly managed to train defense and how this defense works. Originally, there were not three hamsters, but six, but some fell victim to the experiments, which made the guy feel like a bit of an animal killer. Yes, of course, the hamsters py the role of Jesus to the children of humans. Their goal is to show them death, teaching them to accept it. But still, there was something about drowning a hamster in boiling water or putting it in an open fme. To be fair, two of them did not die from bathing in a pot of boiling water. The hamster covered with the protection did not even get wet (and in ordinary water it got wet quite normally!), and not even from getting on a gas burner, because the protection stopped the fme too.

  The first two died from physical damage. The strength of the amulet rgely depended on the size of the object of force, so the hammer blows, a normal hammer, not for meat chops, tore off the hamsters' lives. The third one did not die by human hands at all, having bravely defied Ohm's w, depriving Igor of an extension cord, which he had to buy additionally. How only manage to squeeze between the cells of the cage, chew through the thick wire, and kill himself literally in the three hours that the guy spent on a shopping trip? Truly, there is no limit to the hamster's talent for suicide, no and can not be!

  Attempts to find out anything about his colleagues were, to put it mildly, not very effective. Yes, there were a few YouTube videos of some new YouTube star who managed to set fire with his eyes to birds, dogs, and commentators he didn't like. As, a young Latino from somewhere in Mexico, but living in the States, was nowhere to be seen after the first three videos. And an attempt to surf with a transtor on in the local threads of the town where he lived ended in a small and quickly deleted post about a group of policemen being burned by someone during the seizure. And that the captured psycho with a fmethrower was taken away directly by a very rge number of cars and experts.

  There was also a video from somewhere in the depths of the cocaine wars, where a man, quite overweight, was attacked by gunmen and shot several rounds from an automatic rifle, but it did not prevent him from fiercely and powerfully.... escape. Maybe it was the fact that the extra weight of the shooters' victim was a kind of earthy crust around his body, but Igor was still painfully ashamed. His well-developed Tablet skill would allow him to withstand two or three bullets, at most one not too long line. And that, he only assumes. He wasn't looking for chances to check. He had to console himself with the fact that the video was very fuzzy and could very well be the work of an AI. There were other hints, rumours, jokes, and innuendos flickering on the Internet. But there is always something like that on the Internet. Believe everything that is on the Internet? Not at all. A tinfoil hat can appear on your head all by itself.

  It was more important to look for those near his own ‘sowing area’ and there were already some notes. First, he saw, very vaguely and only from the window, how someone dressed in dark clothes, walking through the yard, shining a torch on his phone, had chased away the mutt with a lightning bolt from his hand. A long one, curving but not branching. I didn't chase it away, I killed it on the spot. The body was cleaned up by the janitors in the morning. On the one hand, Igor was only grateful to this individual, for the creature was dangerous, aggressive, and unnecessary to anyone, especially the public utilities. On the other hand... he'd been practising using that dog to apply the charm from a maximum distance, and he was somewhat upset at the loss of his test subject, which had been hanging around the convenience store almost around the clock.

  Secondly, there was a homeless drunkard, whose name Igor still didn't know, though he wasn't sure about that. Just some kind soul had spotted this individual under a thin yer of icy snow, just as the frosts had hit overnight, and before them there had been heavy wet snow with raindrops mixed in. And, like, this destroyer of the Green Serpent was literally covered with a crust of ice, which guaranteed death from hypothermia. But only an indifferent person, who was a paramedic, or something else, with medical education, decisively tapped the corpse with the toe of his shoe, purely for the sake of ticking and persuasion. And the corpse of the frozen homeless man suddenly began to break the ice crust and to decre in a multi-storeyed drunken swear that they would not let the man sleep in peace, and in general, he was not drunk in any eye and was gssy as if sober! The story fshed on the house forum, grew in details, and the very paramedic, nurse-who-is-who-it-is, himself fell into drinking, to cure his nerves.

  In general, there was food for thought, there was something and someone to look for. So Igor was thinking. So he was looking. He also set new and new protections according to the arm clock, torturing himself, hamsters, and common sense. He was no longer afraid to put his hands in the fire, as well as to wash in boiling water, carefully monitoring the condition of the protection and having learnt to renew it in a moment before it disintegrated. First learning, then consolidating the skill, and only then getting under a shower of boiling water. He never risked sticking the fork in the socket, not even for fear of electrocution. He was just afraid of burning all the wiring to zero, because it had been in need of major repairs for a long time. I was thinking of buying a taser... but not a can of pepper spray, he already had one. But he learnt that the amulet did not protect him from gases, and he had only smelled the cap, a juvenile idiot.

  The protection was a surprisingly complex, much more interesting and multifaceted than a simple “press here to get a shield for fifty damage”. There were a lot of details not specified in the Status and obscure side abilities. For example, you could drown under the protection, but not when the water got aggressively hot. Then you just suffocate, since you can't get air in..... or you could suck in the hot liquid if you forcefully and deliberately pushed the barrier of the protection. Studying it, realizing that he possessed real magic, the kind that didn't have to wait thirty years for, was fascinating. What study? What work or session? Leave the young wizard alone, he's learning how to cast rain of fire. Well, no, he's not going to get a rain of fire. He has the wrong Lot. According to his understanding, the Lot doesn't determine the type and variants of the Tablets to be studied, but it makes it very easy to learn the appropriate ones and wildly hinders those that don't fit the Lot.

  Igor didn't have time to catch the bus, but he decided to take a quiet walk. The snow had already been carefully trampled down, and the frost kept the white carpet from melting. He took his time and enjoyed the walk, taking off the amulet and immediately renewing it as soon as the empty Vessel was replenished. He didn't forget about the ominous warnings and the dark images that came regurly in his dreams. He just stopped worrying about them so much. Yes, something is coming, but he has no idea what exactly and when it will happen, so why should he worry about something he has no idea how to influence? The shit started at the moment when the reminder of the vanity of existence, which had been put in the background, suddenly decided to remind him of itself.* * *