* * *

  Igor woke up in the morning, perfectly awake and shining like a polished silverware... or a teapot. His body was singing from the strength that pervaded it, and he immediately arranged a session of aerobics and exercises without the slightest pause for “blinking”. He thought he was about to do a thousand push-ups on one left hand, but, as, everything turned out to be not so great as he thought. From the unexpected acquisitions for the body, Igor got unnatural freshness, the ability to sleep quickly and well, and an increase in physical condition by about a third of what he had. This was also great, of course, but he had subconsciously expected something in the spirit of Captain America or even Spider-Man.

  On the agenda was the obligatory finishing of the second Tablet to receive the second of the effects, as well as three or four days of leisurely assimition of what he had realized during the battle, and what would become obvious only after he had trained the new tricks. He was going to take the third Tablet in the st Patch, work a bit with that new Tablet, and only then get in touch with Vasily and Zhenya. The essence of his actions is, in fact, simple. His strength and main power is not in level growth, but in the speed of development of the Tablets, which he uses much more efficiently than his companions. A few new sweeps might give him a big boost, but he's even more likely to get killed, so he needs to master what he has. To transte understanding and all that can be done with it into steady, practiced reflexes.

  And then he would be ready to take the risk. With his current protection enhancement, there was no way in hell that ritual could have stripped Vas-Vas of all his defenses and almost twisted Igor. In fact, if they had such powers, the massacre in that abandoned house would have been a showdown, during which they would have epically dismantled the enemy with their bare hands. Let's add the reinforcement with shine, and we can go into battle. It is desirable, of course, behind the backs of those who will take the first blows on themselves. He didn't risk leaving their company unattended. Having registered in messenger with a new number, weak reinsurance, but better than nothing, he contacted Zhenya-Evgeny, under the pretext that he, say, recommended his services in the matter of repair. Quite recently, when they met almost at night. The tter, too, did not trust the soulless system with anything secret, suggesting contact with each other if there was something important again.

  Igor was about to start intensive shine training when he was distracted by the doorbell, which was insistently seeking his attention. It was no reason to open the door, of course, but it wasn't quite polite to ignore the callers, and after some hesitation, Igor decided to look through the peephole. He could always send a salesman or another social data collection service without even opening the door. Having looked through the peephole, he had to open it, without aggression, but with some bewilderment. This was someone whose visit he was not expecting at all, not even a little bit, because why would there be such a visit?

  "Welcome, Elizaveta Albertovna." He nodded politely, looking at the visitor with surprised eyes, remembering that she had known him as a boy, because she was a good acquaintance of his parents. "To what do I owe your visit?"

  The woman looked a little tired and exhausted, like a person who had been on her feet all night, had had coffee in the morning, and was already te for something. However, it did not make her any less charming. At the age of about forty, she could not be given more than thirty-five, despite the hellish rhythm of life of the best wyer in the city, and in her rested state, she hardly looked thirty. She was known as the best wyer not only because she was a super-professional, but also because she and the judge were good friends. Her brown hair, light brown eyes, well-groomed face, which has no wrinkles, unless you count the hint of them at the corners of the eyes, and, of course, her figure. It is hard not to notice such an impressive bust volume, surprisingly harmonious taking into account her considerable height, and completely natural. Ironically, he still remembered that accidentally overheard conversation between Elizaveta and his mother, as well as the fact that they had not closed the door to the room, and Igor was to bme for seeing ‘Aunt Lisa’ in only a half-removed bra that covered nothing!

  It was a good thing that he was still a little boy and had been spared any fatal punitive measures, but much ter, during the hormonal boom of adolescence, he had to admit that the sight was quite memorable. Well, not enough to seek the company of Elizaveta Albertovna, so that their communication since his arrival back at his parents' ft had been limited to rare conversations of five minutes in total duration, and a regur “hello-goodbye” when they met. And also regur tranches of financial aid, especially when he had just moved, not just for nothing but under the guise of work, not complicated, but required some investment of time.

  Igor was sincerely grateful to her for that, knowing well that she could easily let anyone in her office check those documents without paying extra. This, as well as a passing promise to help him get an internship at her firm when he finished at least his third year, was much more than almost anyone else in the world had done for him. The steel wyer's care was subtle, barely visible, and not intrusive, but that was if you didn't notice certain details. Like the bribe-taker in his university, who, for refusing to give a bribe, was going to bury the guy, but quickly pretended that he did not promise him any displeasure at all. In fact, Igor just didn't realise that he was being asked for a bribe in hints. Or the situation with the party at the hostel, when the police busted all the guys and some of the girls because there was a denunciation of drugs (surprisingly, but not confirmed).

  And while the valiant men in uniform were trying to make a case against those who were the baldest, or to demand a bribe so as not to be made a fool of for a false tip-off, they just kicked him home and sent him away. And it didn't work out with the rest of the group, nobody went to jail, nobody sold a kidney to pay off their internal organs, only a couple of people got kicked out for drinking. And he preferred not to go to parties and shady hangouts anymore, because fuck it. The woman standing in front of him did not seek his company and did not seek to communicate at all, making it clear enough. But the young man appreciated her deeds much more than caring words and promises, being sincerely grateful to Elizaveta Albertovna.

  "...no, it was dark, I only saw some people standing in the stairwell talking, but I didn't see you for sure." Igor came out of the captivity of nostalgic memories in the middle of a very active conversation, hardly concentrating on what was being discussed. "Why are you interested?"

  "It doesn't matter, Igor, it doesn't matter at all. I wasn't there, I wasn't here today either, we didn't talk at all today. Right? Nod..." She shook her head with slight irritation and fatigue, ignoring the young man's question, who was somewhat perplexed as to why he was being asked about the faces of those who had been hanging around the entrance st night... as if he, who had returned from battle, cared about those faces and voices, he wanted to get out of sight as quickly as possible. "...as soon as the door closes. Have a good day, young man, take care of yourself, study hard, go to bed on time, and eat healthy."

  "Yes, see you ter, Elizaveta Albertovna, and all the best to you," Igor said goodbye to the visitor, reflexively massaging his temple. He smmed the door shut and looked perplexed at the lock.

  He came back and put on his clothes and shoes. He fulfilled the original pn to go shopping because there wasn't enough food in the fridge. On the way, he habitually put a protection on Borisv Gennadyevich, who only flicked his ears at the familiar stimulus. He was not even perturbed by the fact that two new ones were pced on top of the first protection at once, and the shine on top of it. Why was he sitting here, licking himself, without armour and weapons, eh? The story with the cat was suddenly continued on the way back, when he bought vegetables, chicken breast, and apple juice. Why does he eat only burgers, Coke, fried sausages, and convenience foods? He could make a normal, healthy breakfast, which would not distract him from his training.

  A sharp screech of brakes, loud music from the open window of a tinted BMW, one of those old and cheaper than the norm, and tyre marks on the asphalt testified that this asshole had not been here for the first minute, trying to drift right on the yard road. Some residents shouting from the window, as well as those who came out into the street, obviously did not bother him at all. Well, not everyone had been born with conscience, honour, reason, and brains, and some had not received any of these things at all. It was not for Igor to make a scandal and restore justice with a brick through the gss, was it? Right, not him, so he let the car pass far ahead and walked leisurely to the entrance, shaking his head with sincere condemnation. But Borisv Gennadyevich chose this very moment to change his position, glimpsing a red and white spot somewhere in front of the driver.

  To his credit, he noticed the cat and managed to react, sharply and swiftly hitting the gas and turning the steering wheel to hit the poor fellow not with the bumper, but with the left front wheel. Again, giving credit to someone else's eye and accuracy, which were not reduced by alcohol intoxication, he hit exactly where he was aiming, that is, right at the cat. The cat, on which three protections were still hanging, was hung in advance by the kind boy Igor. Here he tested in practice what happens if you discharge the protection with one blow - the mass of the car, multiplied by the small size of Borisv Gennadyevich, who was a rge cat, but still a cat, resulted in a logical result. Even filling the understanding scale did not help, and not for the first time, Igor noticed that the small size of the target object of the protection pys a critical role.

  The first, and then the second protections burst at once, leaving only almost a intact third, and at the same time giving out, as Igor understood it, a counter flow of impulse and stasis at once, as if pushing away the car wheel and simultaneously slowing it down with the inside-out field of the protection. By defending your attack. A push with a shield is often no less dangerous and deadly than a blow with a bde. This understanding, this concept, and the secret thought from which the seen property-effect was born, improved the already perfectly working protection. The wheel, like part of the bumper, was simply torn out of the grooves, and the car almost turned over, sending it into the nearest mppost. The music, by the way, did not die down right away, because the radio worked until the very end, but almost immediately this music was drowned out by a natural screech, full of almost continuous swearing. Continuous, but not inventive, it should be said. There is no comparison with the same Vas-Vas, who was not a world-css virtuoso in the matter of foul nguage, but a strong academician for sure.

  "I kill you, bastard!" A drunken, staggering individual of about forty years old, with a stamp of ck of intelligence on his face and a fresh abrasion on his forehead, tumbled out of the cabin, waving a completely real gun, yelling towards Borisv Gennadyevich, who had huddled in a corner near the entrance and was quite frightened. Cat had turned into a wheel, fluffed up his fur, and was hissing furiously, not really understanding where to run. "I kill you!"

  Dah! Dah! Dah! Judging by the effect it had on the protection, the gun was not a combat one, but a traumatic one, because with each step the staggering man approaching the hissing cat hit the target with amazing accuracy, but the effect of these hits on the strength of the protection was insignificant. Also, a new understanding of the Tablet allowed him to roughly understand what exactly was hitting the protection, and here Igor could guarantee that these were not lead bullets; he had already received such bullets to the head and could judge from his own experience. The bewilderment of the clearly good shooter made him stop and look with slight shock at Borisv Gennadyevich, who was gradually crawling back, looking at his completely unharmed skin and the ck of reaction to the hit.

  "What are you doing? What the fuck, did you sell me a defective product!?" The hysterical anger of the individual who had crashed his car, apparently not even thinking about how he had managed to crash it into a cat, quickly found a new target for that anger. Fortunately, his mind, clouded by alcohol, easily changed the vector of his emotions. "What the fuck?"

  And you know what? He couldn't think of anything smarter to do than to look down the barrel of the gun! Without unloading it or even taking his finger off the trigger! Borisv Gennadievich was a cat. He didn't reek the energy of the Other Side, or any other energies at all, and his very actions were quite feline. From the very beginning of his acquaintance with the "drunk moron" object, he fluffed up his fur, pressed his ears back and hissed and growled furiously, but the tter simply didn't pay attention to it, taking revenge for his "swallow". And when the attacker stopped screaming loudly and smming the cpping stick just as loudly, the cat considered this a moment of weakness and rushed forward. Igor had no idea whether he would attack the asshole or try to escape, but he dispelled the shine just in case, and in time, otherwise, who knows, the strengthened cat would tear this creature to pieces, and Borisv Gennadyevich would be put to sleep as if he were a normal person.

  Fortunately, there was no fight to the death. The asshole managed it himself. Seeing the sharp jerk of the angry and huge cat, and even strictly in his direction, the man reflexively jerked and pulled the trigger. Just for a moment, but even Igor, not being a fan of traumatic short-barreled weapons, knew that a hit from a quality traumatic weapon to the head at point-bnk range could easily kill outright, no worse than a bullet. The body smmed to the ground like a sack of flour, instantly losing all muscle tone, and only the head and neck jerked sharply, until it crunched, leaning back. Perhaps he would have tried to cover the moron with a talisman, but he simply did not have time to react, and then it was too te. Some intuitive part of his consciousness told him that this patched-up contraceptive had successfully carried out an exempry operation of prompt self-killing.

  "Borisv Gennadyevich, shame on you." He asked reproachfully at the cat that had dived into the basement window, turning round on the spot and a little more hastily continuing his way to his home entrance, and he heard the first cries of ‘Oh, God, an ambunce!’ as soon as he got inside. "Yes, that's how I got the bread!"

  Igor nevertheless fried himself a vegetable ptter with fish, washed it all down with sour juice, and then decisively said, “I'm done with the space outside the apartment,” and set about training the second Tablet. The task was quite clear, there were no obstacles to its implementation, and new ideas and thoughts inspired by insight allowed him to rush forward quite confidently. He took the seventy-fourth unit of the scale before lunch, having completely turned the old door into a set of small scraps, which he then spent another hour and a half sweeping into garbage bags. He acquired the seventy-fifth unit closer to evening, when the winter sun had long since set, covering the world in darkness. Only the regur white fshes with which Igor beat the air and his shadow dispersed the darkness. He managed to activate the radiance not only through contact but also through pure desire.

  The new effect was practically the same as with the protection. He didn't notice much difference, except that the jump was a little harder. Again, the visions, again the mind melting in those visions, were protected by the pulsating Tablet, preventing the Patch from letting through what Igor was too early to know. Support and protection. The desire for your hand to be held by someone else's. This hand, clutching the sword together with you, will guide and complete the blow, will help where your strength alone will not be enough, not enough at all. The new concept does not unfold immediately. He even had time to take a nap. But, having completed the breakthrough, he lies on his back for some time, staring at the ceiling with an unseeing gaze. He deliberately did not turn to the status-list and its images, trying to understand and realise it himself, and only then to rely on the hints.

  Minor Combat Shine: 73/100

  Understanding: 75/100

  Foundation: Spirit

  Brightness: Dim

  Effect: Creates a stable aura of the Light Aspect around the target, passively weakening negative effects and territorial influence, and strengthening every strike or offensive action of the target with the used Aspect. Cast on yourself or the target, draining one of the Vessels for ten minutes, automatically blocking one of the Vessels of either the carrier of the effect or its creator. The effect is fed by the blocked vessel and cannot be dispelled simply by the passage of time as long as the creator of the effect and the target remain conscious.

  Effect: Allows you to easily channel the Aspect of Light's aura through a ranged weapon or attack with pure Aspect energy at close range. The buff applied by Shine now protects not only from negative effects, but also from physical or energy-altered poisons. Allows you to do without breathing and cleanse your body of diseases. Allows you to instantly break the Shine effect on yourself or a target, releasing a greatly increased amount of Shine at once, damaging selected targets or everything in the area, at the cost of emptying the Vessel that supports the effect for about an hour and a half.

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

  I will be your Light, your Executioner...

  Again, a significant enhancement. Several times more than what is avaible. It wasn't just the increased power of the Tablet's base effect. Working with ranged weapons was a retively simple and extremely obvious tool for opness, though he'd have to see if it worked with firearms, of course. Because if it did, he'd either have to rob armoury warehouses, or somehow get himself a gun and go kick some ass around here. Shit, even a child's air rifle with pstic bullets with such boost can do as good a job as a small calibre pistol, but a real gun... well, if it works on firearms, the rules of the game are changing right now. Against this background, the ability to simply and uncomplicatedly beat with waves of white light from bare palms or any other part of the body was not so impressive, as well as the ability to create snow-white knuckles or even a primitive bde by pure will and imagination. No, not a bde, but just a peg growing straight out of his fist.

  The lethal power of such a move is great, and he easily knocked down and crumpled a coin from a distance of four steps, miraculously not damaging the wall of the apartment, but it is lost against the background of firearm potential. Let's take, for example, the same typical medieval world, where a crossbow with a winch is the pinnacle of the weapons industry, and the battlefield is ruled by cold steel, then yes, it is understandable. In the case of a slightly more technological Earth ... for a moment, Igor simply imagined himself standing behind the trigger of a memetic multi-barreled machine gun "Minigun", and loading it with Combat Shine. Honestly, he sincerely tried not to be arrogant, imagining that with such acceleration, he could punch even Cthulhu himself in the face. Firstly, it is unlikely that he encountered truly powerful creatures, otherwise, he would not be standing here. Secondly, it is obvious that he does not yet have a minigun, nor even a hunting rifle.

  "If I can predict the future, I'll live in Vegas." He exhaled sadly and not without regret, remembering the obviously criminal gun with an unknown number of bodies on it, which he had thrown away for ck of use and a ck of ammo. “Or I could have id down a trampoline instead of straw.”

  He, after thinking it over, decided not to test the st of his newly acquired functions, being quite afraid of losing his home and at the same time depriving his neighbors of theirs. As that image-verse had said, this Light could very well also be the Executioner, and it seemed that he now understood why the images from his subconscious had formed exactly that phrase. If a never-attacking protection managed to turn a perfectly functional machine into scrap metal when it disintegrated, then this fsh of light could demolish walls. Yes, he felt he could make this fsh pure, not posing a threat to anything except the chosen target or targets, but he was not going to test it in his apartment anyway. But he managed to py with the ability to not breathe to his heart's content, sitting like that for half an hour until he got tired of it.

  He was slowly preparing to start taking the third Tablet when two things happened. First, a message came from the previously silent Evgeny, conic and not suspicious, if you didn’t know the background: “Hello, Hedgehog. I have a side job, like st time, for three. Are you busy tomorrow evening?” It’s not hard to guess that tomorrow, like today, Igor was not busy, which he immediately reported. Oh, if only he could be invisible or have the ability to observe the enemy from afar or through walls, so that he would know the exact circumstances of the meeting and not risk meeting at someone else’s invitation. He had already begun to get ready little by little, when there was an insistent ring at the door and then a knock. And when he went to look through the peephole, he was met not by neighbors or even Herbalife representatives, but by two tired men, one of whom was in uniform, and the other in civilian clothes. Both of them poked their IDs into the peephole at once, just in case.

  "Open up, citizen, police." This individual spoke in a tone that does not imply refusal, and it was the one in civilian clothes who spoke. "Interviewing witnesses regarding a recent incident."

  "Wait, I'll get dressed." The guy who really just got out of the shower answers, trying his best to suppress the urge to ask "Who locked you up there?", like in the joke. "What do I owe you?"

  "Nothing special, don't worry or be anxious." The civilian let into the apartment responded in a friendly and good-natured manner. Only his eyes remained cold and tenacious, like X-ray, which is why Igor, if he had less control over himself, would have become agitated and worried. "The incident in your yard happened literally yesterday, right?"

  "It happened, I was just returning from the groceries." He answered honestly, suppressing the desire to lie, because too many people had gathered there because of the deceased asshole. "Then the ambunce was fshing its lights, and they arrived quickly."

  "Well, that's really amazing. It's so long to wait for them." The tone and manner of speech were immediately picked up by the man in civilian clothes, who had been conducting the entire conversation, in contrast to the silent and bored policeman in uniform. By the way, I didn't introduce myself "Fyodor Mamalygin, police captain, and the young man behind me is Ivan Perin, he's still a lieutenant with us. So, you say you saw what happened?"

  Igor, as a person who involuntarily understood the acting business, even admired and tried with all his might not to show how wary he was. Because this guy, who fshed his ID card just so that nothing could be seen, could be anyone but not an ordinary policeman. He knew how to talk, how to conduct conversations, and knew perfectly well how to get a person to open up. He acted exceptionally well, instantly adapting to Igor. In twenty-five minutes of conversation, he not only casually learned much more about Igor than he would like to tell, but also asked him three times in different details about what exactly he saw. And the guy did not lie, did not prevaricate, did not try to lead the investigation on a false trail. He did not py with this big shot. He simply said what he saw, without even omissions. The moment with the armored cat was hidden from his sight by the body of the car anyway, so he did not have to invent anything.

  They said goodbye almost as friends, even Ivan, who was silent the whole time and only taking notes, and then left. Igor allowed himself to exhale not right away, not right away at all. He didn't like the way the guy tched onto the traces of the recent cleaning, the way he interrogated him about his studies and life... a very unpleasant man, so unpleasant that he wanted to wash his hands. And something told Igor that he was not a policeman at all, but from a higher-ranking office and a bigger city. He had already dealt with his own police, he had seen their professionalism, which would be more accurately called extremely concentrated absolute indifference. And here he personally questioned all the witnesses, went from apartment to apartment, and questioned not only him. They said in the house chat that they really questioned all the witnesses and some ordinary residents, and everything was so cleverly done, as if by accident.

  When you see such a person at work and realise they are looking for you, you can't help but squeeze your balls. Igor also feared that it would be extremely difficult for him to leave the ft unnoticed. You do not need to be Sherlock and Poirot to assume that the car was damaged by someone who was fed up with the racer. And, if there, in the special investigative group, which was sent from Moscow, they already believe in ‘devilish things’, then they should look in the nearest courtyard. Or, if they don't believe in the devilishness, to look for a shooter or a sapper, who damaged the car of the asshole. But somehow they're too serious about the job to believe in the ‘rational version’. When six months ago a man was beaten to death by a couple of drinking buddies, they had to wait five hours for the squad to arrive, and no interviews had been conducted at all, but here we have such an individual and banced approach.

  For a while, he wanted to cancel the idea of a general raid, as Eugene had suggested, but he overpowered himself. There was no need to get paranoid yet. It was not clear yet, and he had already imagined round-the-clock surveilnce around the house and satellite images through the window. He's gonna look. He knows his yard very well, and if someone is really being watched, he will notice it, because he will know that the observer should be searching for. And he also doubted that the guys have nothing to do now, if even without bothering, he found three nests of paranormal, each of which was associated with corpses in the assortment, it is terrible to assume that there are all over the city. The situation is such that it is impossible to allocate a lot of people to every suspicious sneeze.

  Probably.

  He hoped so.

  No one woke him up that evening and night, no one broke into the house, no one dragged him to the interrogation with a bottle and a soldering iron, no one interfered with his training, and everything was almost fine. He even went to bed early, having decided for once to look after himself and observe a normal daily regimen, but when he woke up in the middle of the night to drink water, he managed to observe a very funny scene. With the familiar hero of this scene, and to observe it very carefully, literally through a slit between the dense curtains, the good thing happened all along the line of direct vision. To be honest, Igor found himself giggling like an idiot and couldn't do anything about it.

  Given: night, street, two hand mps, and a cat, which is Borisv Gennadievich, and on top, we add two clearly male figures in dark clothes, who are trying to catch said cat. Apparently, they first caught him with the traditional Whiskas. That's some nasty stuff that you can't feed cats, unless you want them to die a painful death from kidney stones. And with the no less traditional kitty-kitty-kitty. The scourge of yard cats, pigeons, rodents, dogs, and drunk drivers in old BMWs ignored these arguments with truly feline contempt. And when they started to catch him by force, a real mess ensued. First, one of the mplighters got his foot in a hole, getting, at the very least, a dislocation, judging by the screams. Then the rest of the house's residents woke up and started yelling at the filthy stashers, the fucked-up drug addicts and the damned sadists. They didn't forget to protect the yard alpha and the king either; someone went down with a baseball bat, a couple more started shining fshlights down, and someone just called the police.

  And here, by the way, a real miracle happened, because the police came and came quickly, surprisingly quickly. That's how they would have come for drunken thugs or night scandals of dysfunctional families. And when they arrived, they almost started to push the cat catchers into their car, before they, with ingenious swearing, did not start to poke in the face of cops with some IDs and shouting ‘special, fucking, operation’. It ended with the police returning the nterns to a couple of ntern workers, and then went away. Borisv Gennadyevich, who was quite frightened by the fuss raised around him, had fled the scene even earlier, which upset the couple very much.

  After giggling a bit, Igor finally went to bed, because watching the security forces who had exposed themselves as idiots was certainly a pleasant moment, but if you were to shake up some regime, it certainly wasn’t your sleep regime. In his dream, he saw Borisv Gennadyevich slyly grinning into his mustache, lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite before throwing it into the window of the police station with a loud meowing cry of “For your and ours freedom!” The stern cat walked away with his back to the explosion, with his tail like a pipe and not turning around at the fsh of fme, like a real action movie hero.

  This time he didn't make up much, just took a change of clothes and shoes in his backpack, and threw the st hat-mask he had in the apartment, thanks to one of the previous tenants, who had left some of his clothes when he moved in. Smiling and squinting carefree, the young man went on the road, having managed to do some shopping, sit in cafes, and surf the Internet. Little by little, it became clear that, simir to his hometown, mystical and ominous events are not only here. At least one more Norwegian town, quite small, some wild things happened. There, literally overnight, three dozen people were disemboweled and hung along the road in the style of pagan sacrifices.

  The inhabitants of the Internets alternately expressed sympathy, were horrified by the cruelty of others, and joked about the glorious traditions of true Vikings. The army was brought into the city. It was rumored that not only Norwegian troops were seen there, but also representatives of the Allied States. The States had already begun to bring their navy closer, even though they too had strange happenings in the state of, who would have thought, Maine. Stephen King is probably hiccupping and flushing his first-rate coke into the toilet right now.... jokes are jokes, but it's not funny. It's not funny at all, it's scary. The timer in his head continued indifferently counting down the time, and the young man understood more and more clearly that this countdown does not bode well for him personally and for the whole popution of the third pnet from the Sun.

  * * *

  Eugene's handshake was still as firm as ever. The ambush, which would either catch Igor or brutally torture him for an unknown but extremely sinister purpose, did not show itself in any way due to the absence in this yer of reality. Vas-Vas also gurgled something, gulping down a two-litre bottle of vodka as if it were a soda. The bum was dressed in rags, not new, but obviously fresher than he had been. Though he had not washed and shaved his beard, nor had he washed himself. Apparently, Eugene did not have enough diplomacy points to provoke such a powerful change of image. But he had a pn of the territory and the approximate location of the source of the Other Side's power, which was much more valuable to Igor than the fragrance of the test perfume collection.

  "I almost walked past it twice. There’s definitely some kind of crap there, it’s distracting,” says Zhenya, pointing to a Google map printout full of his notes. “Here, a small building, I think there used to be a kindergarten back in the nineties, then a restaurant and shops. Then they even tried to open a boutique with counterfeit goods imported from China, and about seven years ago, the owner of the building went to jail for a long time. He’s still in jail. So the pce was abandoned, now they’re trying to squeeze it out for the construction of some shopping center, but the inmate won’t give it up. I didn’t look into it. The point is that the stench is coming from there. So far, no people have disappeared in the area, but there are no animals anymore. That’s a fact. The stench is weaker than that from the abandoned building where we met, but it could be because everything there is tightly sealed with concrete walls. They built it in such a way that you could confuse the kindergarten with the bunker."

  Vas-Vas listens silently and gurgles vodka, burping loudly, but listens attentively, and judging by the amount he drank, the vodka really is just water to him. When asked why he drinks it, the homeless man good-naturedly answered that he really likes the taste. Igor tries to ask questions to the point, slightly lifting the curtain on what exactly he can do with his Lot. The three set out for the job already completely wrapped in three yers of protection and with a halo of shine around their bodies. Everyone liked the new outfit, even though Zhenya did not particurly see the original skill, unlike Vas-Vas. They also leveled up, opening the second Tablet, although, as Igor understood, the lightning adept's second ability was not Dim, but Dying. But Vas-Vas did not disappoint, having acquired natural regeneration. He cut his hand with a folding knife, finished the bottle of vodka in one gulp, and showed the already healed wound, from which there was not even a scar left.

  But first he had to take a piss. He drank vodka like water, as his mad resistance allowed him to do, but the liquid never left his body. He ate it with bananas, by the way. A whole bunch of rotten fruit, probably discarded before the expiration date. So the usual odour of his partner was blocked by the even stronger smell of overripe bananas. Each meeting was like a new test for Igor's sense of smell.

  "We go in through the back door, just jump over the fence, break the door, but carefully, this white shit will come in handy if you can pick locks with bare hands." Eugene's instruction met no resistance because Vas-Vas didn't give a shit, and Igor didn't find better options due to ck of experience and tactical genius, which could repce experience. "We don't break anything, we don't touch or pull anything, we don't leave any marks, we wear gloves. So, we get ready to fight. The pce is quiet, next to the market, and it's empty at night; there's only a watchman, and on the other side is a wastend, and a ravine filled with rubbish. We go in, clean up, close the hole, and go back, divide the loot into three parts, if it is not divided, throw a coin or a dice. Or you'll say I magnetised it."

  Eugene's second ability was not magnetism, but a form of electroperception, thanks to which he could see through walls. It was very useful despite the weakness of the Tablet compared to the Dim ability. Generating lightning and current strikes was his main and very flexible trump card. He could strike directly, send it along the ground or a wall, simply ‘fucking electrocute’ when touched, wrap lightning around his fists, or create an unstable shield that was weak against physical obstacles but effective against magic. In direct combat, he was the strongest and most dangerous of the three, for he beat the shine in speed, distance, and flexibility. The man could also combine radiance and lightning, which made the lightning blindingly white and noticeably, very noticeably, more powerful.

  "I have, in fact, not exactly a lightning strike." He spoke, sharing information, showing off, or brazenly misinforming his allies. "It's really Vessels, for fuck's sake. In the sense that I charge an individual Vessel, or Shot, with the power of the Tablet, then I can discharge that power. I can empty it all at once, in one blow, so that the arms and legs are fucking blown off. Or I can shoot individual charges, like from a machine gun, but it's strong enough only for backyard dogs."

  Igor only grinned, understanding the reference perfectly and realising exactly what kind of dogs he was training on. Not that he felt pity for the shrill and aggressive flea-bitten mutt, but he had trained his amulet on it, and the loss of the dummy was a bit of a shame. He remembered his ally's expnation and learnt it anyway, because he didn't know how it would turn out. The people in their team were not the worst, but they were unfamiliar, and he didn't trust them completely. And he was also sincerely sure that they did not trust him either, not even the deceptively simple Vas-Vas, who either didn't give a shit about everything, or he managed to convince everyone of that very successfully. In any case, he goes into battle in their company and under their cover, and the battle is not at all like typical computer games. And it's not even the ck of a save point, no.

  Remembering the atmosphere of crushing disgust and horror that overtook him during the battle with either the creature from the stall or the cannibal from the gingerbread apartment... remembering the terrible mouth covering his entire head, which time after time slid off the protection, trying to bite off Igor's face... It's very difficult to perceive all of this as a game. A fantasy. Not real. Like, he just lost, shook himself off, got a beer for a dash, and then let's go again, a new raid, rush B, everyone to mid, and so on. There was nothing cheerful or even majestic and heroic in what they all witnessed. There was only one abomination, like old rot that needs to be scraped off and burned. Not because they are such moralistic saviors, but because it cannot be done differently, a priori.

  The fence at the entrance to the new ir of Evil was literally symbolic. Each of them could easily jump over it, rather than fiddle with the padlock on the gate. They didn't bother, walking into the yard and immediately lying down in the snow that had never been cleared, rolling behind a snowdrift. Not because they were afraid of the creatures sitting inside, but because a police car drove by, its signal system fshing. It wasn't going anywhere, it was just patrolling. Vas-Vas had time to doze off and start snoring while the w enforcement officers were driving around the corner, so they had to wake him up. The lock on the back entrance to the building was also opened quickly and without problems, although the lock wasn't a padlock. He had to push the door with shining fingers, almost tearing the gloves on those fingers, just removing a piece of the lock from the grooves. The open passage creaked, and a smell of old dust and the intensified stench of the Other Side came from it.

  Vas-Vas was the first to enter, even bending slightly and covering his face and beard with his hand, although that beard should not be preserved, but trimmed, to be honest. The second to slip in was Evgeny, around whose hands sparks of a discharge ready to break out glistened. Igor entered st, holding on behind his back and under the cover of two comrades, not even squeezing the long-suffering crowbar very tightly. Their steps echoed with a barely audible, but deafening sound in this silence, and their breathing sounded even louder. They passed the first corridor, peered into empty rooms or rooms filled with empty boxes, stepping over piles of small trash that had accumuted incomprehensibly. Then the homeless man turned, stepped forward, and they followed, but after a couple of steps, the tank in front slowed down and pointed its finger forward.

  The fshlight beam turns on fully, revealing to the view of those who entered... a mannequin. Here is a most ordinary mannequin, only in the shabby and worn clothes of a typical janitor. And a mannequin, if you think about it, is not so ordinary. Firstly, where did it come from? Secondly, the mannequin is very strange and ugly, as if molded from cy, having only the most general outlines of a humanoid. A solid lumpy mass in pce of a face, thick pipe arms, a disproportionate square head, as well as pieces of brick sticking out here and there, like raisins in a bun. Not a mannequin, no, but almost some kind of statue! These thoughts fsh through Igor's head, but Evgeny does not think, but immediately strikes: snow-white lightning, enhanced by the effect of a well-pumped Tablet, hits exactly at that very head. The fsh could have attracted the attention of the entire street, but the windows are saved by being tightly sealed with bck film, and the film looks fresh.

  The lightning strike, and even more so, with the force of a small piece of snow-covered pavement being crushed into rubble, only tore off a few pieces from the mannequin's head, leaving a fist-sized pothole. From this pothole, a noticeably thicker and more nauseating force suddenly began to flow, as if the Other Side had only been seeping out a little before, but was now flowing in a thick stream. Thick and extremely foul-smelling, it must be said! All three were surprised, but none had time to react - the statue rushed forward silently and without even making a sound, almost blurring from the speed of its dash.

  Only Vas-Vas met him, having managed to raise his hands to defend himself, but still missed two clear and very technical-looking blows to the chin, which, given the weight and size of the creature's fists, would have been fatal if people had not had the protection. As the quote said? A two goes to your beard, grandpa! For a second, the darkness and crampedness of the room were illuminated by a fsh of barely distinguishable ghostly shine when the first protection on Vas-Vas burst, releasing power and, for a moment, becoming more effective than usual. The fist of the statue simply crumbled, as if an anti-personnel mine was hidden under the dirty beard of the heroic hobo. The creature even stepped back, obviously from considerable surprise and, in fact, from the impact impulse. Vas-Vas, having hissed something obscene, stepped forward, hitting the golem with his entire body weight.

  Another fsh of whiteness, with which the creature, obviously too heavy for its volume, is pushed as if it were made of rags, and then another lightning strike, only this time so strong that it even blinded a little. The statue did not survive such treatment. First, its head crumbled, causing the pile of building materials to seem to lose coordination, and then Vas-Vas's hammer completes the rout, in three quick blows, accompanied by white fshes, splitting the body of the creature. Silence again, only now even more tense, and also a stream of rainbow mist, from which the creature had struck them, spreading between the three of them. Igor got no less than his two comrades, if that matters.

  The silence is short-lived because after about five seconds, a leisurely, measured, and frightening regur sound of heavy footsteps is heard. As if someone dressed in stone boots or a stone statue were walking. All three Exalted Ones look at each other, and then retreat a little, taking up more comfortable positions, preparing to meet the enemy: two more figures dressed in rags appeared in the field of view. Vas-Vas exhaled hoarsely and even managed to say out loud that the noticeable jacket of the one walking in front belonged to a certain Siphonych. Igor, with great difficulty, refrained from asking if Siphonych had a friend nicknamed Beardie, and then there was no time for jokes of varying degrees of inferiority.

  Both statues also accelerated, but now, when their speed was already expected, Zhenya managed to cut off the supporting leg of one of the statues with a lightning strike. The damaged unit fell on a leg broken at the foot, but the second golem not only maintained its speed, it literally jumped with all its mass into the wall, like a parkour runner, pushing off from it, and flying over the dumbfounded Vas-Vas. The noise was as if a massive boulder had crashed into the wall, which was a completely truthful description. The wall cracked and even bent inward; a little more and it would have colpsed. The homeless man's blow nded on the exposed head of the fallen creature, breaking off a piece from it. The stench of the Other Side is getting stronger, already equaling or almost equaling that of the abandoned park. The second golem of the "Jumper" model crashes with all its mass into Evgeny, who has just gasped, causing him to fall right onto Igor, who doesn't have time to react.

  Zhenya didn't screw up. Already falling, he put his hands on the creature's lower back, discharging all the remaining reserves of lightning into it, having already emptied all three avaible Vessels. The first burst of protection didn't even slow the creature down, but the shock wave from the second not only pushed away the small debris, but also threw half of the creature off the electromancer, wheezing under its weight. Half, because the lower part of the golem was reliably chopped off, or to be more precise, completely torn off, now twitching and kicking its legs, as if trying to get up. And Igor's crowbar hit the head of the upper half, standing quite coordinatedly on both hands, and trying to continue the fight on the ground. There is no move cooler than a crowbar, especially one charged with a pumped-up skill, which gave it armor-piercing ability on the level of weak artillery.

  With a loud bang, half of the head simply exploded, showering stone-concrete shrapnel in all directions, and an additional kick from a prone position finally broke the head, knocking it off the neck. Apparently, it was barely hanging on anyway, because the blow was not very strong, even if you count the shine. The torso was still retively intact, but being cut in half did not add any “health” to this pile of crumbled bricks. The sluggish twitching of the halves was no longer considered resistance. The measured and very fast blows of the hammer, accompanied by obscene reproaches towards Hugo and Byron, split the second one into pieces, which never rose. Although the white shine almost did not fre up around that hammer, apparently having been spent on the initial blows, now the creature’s defense was no longer coping.

  Igor's head was just beginning to fsh with the lonely thought "we won" when a pair of long and much thinner, but also stone, hands emerged from the wall of the corridor, grabbing the shoulders of Zhenya, who was still lying down and trying to get up. Grabbing him and pulling him into the wall, which at that moment seemed to soften, becoming like fog and jellied meat, and not a hard stone. The man only managed to say the sacramental "Oh, f..." before disappearing into the quickly hardening wall, which began to look like cheese that had melted in a microwave. Igor repeated what was said, jumping to his feet and giving a kick to the still twitching body of the colpsed creature, and rushed into the doorway. Finding only an empty room, on the far wall of which there was another "melted" spot, and a trace of someone's body being dragged through solid dust and garbage.

  "Fuck!" was all he exhaled, running back into the corridor to see Vas-Vas, caught in a cssic chokehold, being dragged into another wall by another simir figure, half sticking out of the floor surface. "Fuck-fuck-fuck!!!"

  "Dragged it there!" the bearded tank hissed, pointing with his chin further down the corridor, at the same time forcing one of the strangler's hands to move back a little, and then biting into the concrete with his teeth and gnawing out a piece of the limb with shining white teeth, then breaking off one of the hands strangling him, and starting to get to his feet and drag the creature crawling in the concrete into the light of day, beating its cone-shaped head with the hammer clenched in his fist, since it was unclear when the handle of the hammer had managed to get lost somewhere, as had Vas-Vas's spare weapon. "Quick, until it's gone!"

  Igor didn't want to wait for Zhenya to "gone", so he, clutching a crowbar in his hands, rushed towards the sounds of the struggle and fshes of electricity, gd that although this type of golem could walk through walls, at least its strength and penetrating ability were weaker. Otherwise, the st charge of the protection would have been removed from Vasily, and his head would have been torn off by this moment. Unlike the super-resistant homeless man, Zhenya could not cope with the enemy. The st protection on him burst literally before Igor's eyes, and the remaining lightning had already ended, so the appearance of the support was very opportune for the main DD of their entire party. Finding his ally lying on his back, while the abomination sitting on him tried to reach his throat, overcoming the grip of barely shining white hands, Igor loudly warns of his arrival in order to avoid allied fire, shouting out what emerged from the depths of his soul:

  "Penalty-y-y-y!" The blow from the crowbar would have done credit to any baseball pyer, well, at least in Igor's imagination, instantly severing the creature's head and causing the stone-concrete heap to fall right on Zhenya, wheezing from the strain and overexertion. "Go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-l!!! Phew, I thought they'd have time to devour you-e-e-e-e-e-e..."

  As it turned out, there were not three and two creatures, but three and three, an equal number for each species. And the third entity waited for a convenient moment to crawl out of the floor, grabbing Igor's knees with its impossibly long fingers, simultaneously starting to pull and squeeze. If there hadn't been a protection, his bones would have crunched, because this creature had perfect strength in its limbs, no weaker than dressed mannequins. The first protection burst, but didn't make the monster unclench its fingers, didn't even damage them. The second followed a second ter, when Igor found himself in the basement, and the Slenderman-like creature threw him against the wall like a fil. A fil, because it was still squeezing one of his legs!

  The protection's "slipperiness" saved him. If he could hold it with both hands and a firm grip, it simply slipped out of one limb, falling to the floor, leaving a sizable dent in the wall. The st protection existed on crumbs of strength, and he still had no time to concentrate and create a new one on top of the first. The creature, tall and skinny, like a stick man, turned its cone-shaped head towards him and, abruptly, only slightly slower than the mannequins, rushed into close contact. Igor, whose buttocks were clenched in horror, and whose heart beat in its rhythm, even at the speed of Eminem's reading, only curled up into a ball like an embryo, pulling his knees up to his face and holding his breath. The creature hardly had time to feel mocking contempt for his behavior, simply because he doubted that this creature could experience any feelings.

  But if that contempt did exist, it did not st long: Igor, curled up in a ball, began to shine like a small sun or a rge fshlight, and then released a very powerful wave of pure shine with his entire body. And the stone creature was not simply thrown back, but literally crushed into rubble. At the st moment, the guy managed to shift the focus of the attack to only one creature, otherwise, he would have been buried under the colpsed building. And so the shock wave of light managed to simply grind down part of the walls and floor, raising such a cloud of dust in the basement that it was just complete crap. Igor thanked the recently arisen opportunity not to breathe, quickly renewing the protection and shine on himself, spending two free Vessels.

  With a quiet groan, more from psychological release than from real pain, he first sat up, then stood up, moving towards where he saw the door in the fsh of dying light. His fshlight was somewhere upstairs. The door, heavy and iron, gave way very quickly, and he, although he expected an attack from another creature, waited for something completely different. The beams of the fshlights and the quiet curses of his comrades turned out to be a pleasant surprise. To be honest, he did not believe they would follow him and not run away at the first opportunity. They had made quite a noise and could well wait for the arrival of a reinforced police squad, especially if it was about those very same "strange people in civilian clothes."

  "This is shit, Hedgehog." That's all Zhenya said in a slightly hoarse voice, helping him find a crowbar and at the same time inspecting the rest of the premises of the former kindergarten. In response to his bewilderment, he gloomily expined his thought. "Do you smell the stench of the Other Side? Exactly. And I don't smell it either. The background was created by these crumbled whores, and not another hole or a rift. Someone dragged them here, someone intelligent, since they didn't get caught. And here only the stone bitches were stored. And a couple of corpses with broken necks in the far corner. I don't like this fucking thing. Just not at all. First, that idiot in the abandoned building, now these concrete soldiers are not Urfin Juice at all. Okay, that's a matter for another conversation. Let's get out of here now."

  And they left, having first cleaned up the most obvious traces of their presence. They got no loot, except for the rainbow mist from their opponents, and what they got... well, it did not pay off the risk they had endured. This fight was the hardest for Igor, even harder than the fight with the non-zombie freak he had shot. The three of them had come here together and almost died. If the creatures had not rushed into battle immediately, without caring about the tactics of interaction, if the wall crawlers and the super-strong statue had struck at the same time... The three of them could have been buried here, they would not have coped, although they would have inflicted some losses in the process of their heroic death.

  Step: 0 [531/1000]

  Minor Protective Charm: 87/100

  Minor Combat Shine: 80/100

  Personally, Igor was pleased with his progress. Even if the scale hadn't shifted too much in numerical values, he was aware of the enormity of this shift. Each subsequent movement in understanding the Tablets became more and more difficult. Those six units of understanding of the protection he had realized during this massacre were worth fifty units from zero, or even more. What's more! Definitely more! Then again, the half a thousand units to the level of transition from the zero Step was also pleasant. If only it weren't for the feeling of losing from this situation... they had destroyed not even someone's ir or boratory, but a real warehouse of finished products. That was the problem. There, in this building, there were no traces that these statues had been created or modernized in this same room. No - they simply stood, barely noticeable, as if for their impressive power, emitting the Other Side into the surrounding space.

  And this means that somewhere in the city, there is a true ir of a mad sculptor, who, if he didn’t sense the death of his creations initially, will quickly learn about them through word of mouth. And this sculptor, damn him, is clearly much smarter and more restrained than that “Comrade Mengele” who died from a lethal dose of lead. He barely resembled a human being, hiding in the middle of an abandoned building and, apparently, not leaving it for days, feeding on the bodies of captured people. This one somehow delivers his creations here, and even restores the yer of dust in the process, which, as Zhenya noticed, was too thick and even. This means he is almost no different from a human, or even without any almost, hiding among normal people, and it’s not even a fact that he stinks of the Other Side. His creations in inactive mode almost didn’t stink, if to think about it.

  "The locks weren't broken, and the windows were sealed not a long time ago, maybe even after all this shit started," Zhenya spoke almost in a whisper, hiding with them in the middle of a blind archway in one of the inner courtyards, empty and quiet, despite the abundant traces of past feasts of noisy companies, as if these companies sensed danger in the air, not daring to drink anymore. "I'll ask around. Who's the owner, who's the guard, who has the keys? I'll ask carefully, otherwise, fuck, I don't want to get in trouble again. But if I don't get in touch in a week... remember me, or something, with a shot of whiskey. That's all. We didn't take any loot, if you don't count the beatings, and we got our fair share of that anyway. Bye."

  "Yeah, take care of yourself, my dear fellow." Vas-Vas spped him on the shoulder heartily, hiccupping loudly and taking a sip of vodka from a half-liter bottle he had pulled out of nowhere. "And I, then, will go get some sleep. Hic! I'm tired for some reason."

  And so they parted, nodding to each other and agreeing not to lose sight of their allies. Igor got home already unsteady on his feet and climbed into the apartment, falling asleep on the go. He had to force himself to take a contrast shower, cook a te, but not too unhealthy dinner, and even brush his teeth after it. Already falling asleep, he noted that he was not the only one who returned after the night's adventures, because a couple of people were clearly walking up the stairs past his door with heavy steps. Some part of him, that remembered the need to watch the nearby houses, looking for colleagues, even wanted to go out and see who was messing around. He even almost saw himself getting up with a groan, throwing on a bathrobe, going to the door, and looking out the peephole, watching through it with curiosity. It even seemed that he could already discern the figures of the night walkers, blurred in the light of a couple of fshlights, mentally cursing at those who had unscrewed the light bulbs on the stairs, despite the fact that the dark stairs had pyed into his own hands...

  But, apparently, this scene was simply a dream, because he woke up in his bed in the morning, well-rested and happy, only for some reason in that same bathrobe.

  "I need more sleep." He grumbles, throwing off a piece of clothing worn in a state of sleepwalking, no other way, taking up a light physical exercise. "More sleep."

  And of course, work.

  * * *

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