* * *

  The second session gave the experience again, but to a lesser extent than during the first night of dense and passionate communication with the local priesthood, and there was still a little less than a quarter of a bar left before the level-up. The help obligingly suggested that constant sex with the same partner would give a decreasing result, so it was better to alternate these partners. If not change them like gloves, at least to reduce the coefficient of decreasing additions to the scale. Lazy thoughts were no less zy move in the empty and completely satisfied head, the same zy-satisfied Shera had already successfully run away on her business, and Stepan's mind was full of evil and insidious pns. But, come on, not evil, not even too insidious.

  They talked once more, having already finished and had time to catch their breath after active body movements, clearly stiputing the terms and wording of their bet. Even though the priestess did not believe in the young man's victory, she was not too zy to get confirmation that in case of success, he would remove the spell after the “victory” and reap the fruits of that victory. The shaman agreed without even thinking about it, and Shera, who was reading it with her analog of polygraph, nodded satisfiedly and calmed down a bit, though she was not worried much. Stepan didn't intend to ensve her or do any other nefarious things, but he didn't forget to ask her to confirm that her prayer of repentance would come down with the new full moon, and also to confirm her intention to use only the specified effect in case of her victory, i.e. the prayer in question and only for one moon of the term. It was funny, but neither of them doubted their success or the other's defeat, each of them considered himself an almost guaranteed winner.

  After these negotiations, the priestess jumped on the young man for the st time, quickly reaching the peak herself and bringing him there, and then quickly bathed in the almost empty water barrel, leaving her lover to prepare for the “fight”. Stepan could not be sure, but it seemed to him that she did not even notice the action of the tantric hearth, or rather did not realize that it replenished her strength and reserve. She herself, judging by indirect signs, knew how to recharge both herself and her partner from sex, so she took her excellent condition for granted. If she were not a priestess, but a cssical gifted, she wouldn't have missed it, and even now she could have guessed it, if she had decided to check herself intentionally. She didn't, and that was probably a good thing. Or she did, but she didn't find it surprising, which wasn't a bad thing either.

  And the mighty, albeit mostly in the long run, the shaman was left all alone thinking about the great and high. He was not in the mood to work and grind. He was tired of his working rhythm, having given himself over to the possibility of falling out of it at least for a while. He had fallen out, and now he couldn't bring himself to jump back into it. His mind was looking for new reasons to be zy but still yielded to the will and spirit of the trainee. While you sleep, your enemy grind - an old truth but now it's more relevant than ever. No, well, what if in this world, at the same time with the isekai, there was some raid-boss, and also with a System? He didn't doubt the Autogoddess, he even believed in her. With a sigh, he began to get ready, to get dressed, to wash his body with the remaining and heated by spirit water. Then he went to his favorite clearing, which even from here he felt not as an extension of his will but as a pce where his will became visible and embodied power.

  He would work only a little this afternoon, and at night, as agreed, he would summon his pet Sleepwalker into Shera's dreams, so in the morning he could try to get if not a level, then a free meta-skill. It was a doable task, and therefore he was calm, but he was more concerned with the spirits he was going to call outside of their bet with Shera, as well as the spent of that talent point. First of all, his thoughts went in the direction of improving “peaceful development”, which brings a lot of benefits and significantly accelerates the leveling even at the first rank. By all means, it would be worth it in the end of these quest games to the current maximum limited by the characteristics, that is, to three. But there were other options, which directly beckoned with their descriptions, annoying at the same time with inaccessibility. In his life, he is too greedy, afraid to spend talent on meta-skills, which may well be a mistake, because these skills, even without strengthening directly, can give even more than properties and knowledge, if you evaluate their usefulness not in the moment, but over a long period of life.

  Or not.

  He called in a detached manner renewing some of the contracts, creating new homes for the spirits, but practically not exerting himself. The only serious summoning was an earth-oriented battle spirit, capable of covering a target with a thick yer of instantly petrifying dust. The enemy would be slowed and stiffened by such clothing, while the shaman or his ally would only be armored to the level of full-fledged armor, but weighing no more than paper of the same volume. The spirit was surprisingly phlegmatic, calmly and without bargaining, accepting the offering, a portion of the reserve, and agreeing to live a couple of years in a beautiful colored stone still from the reserves of the chest that Milf-Goddess gave him. Having squandered his reserves and having somehow reconciled himself to the fact that to some extent he was at the mercy of the Autogoddess, the young man prepared a circle, isoted it as much as possible, and cautiously called the one who had been given to him for faithful service within very narrow limits.

  The Sleepwalker felt different from the couple he'd sent after Truda and Lashka, but there was no one else he could use for the present purpose. It would have been dangerous to repeat the effect on the herbalist and her daughter, only applied to Shera, because those spirits left quite noticeable long-sting effects on their victims behavior and future lives. Even if it wasn't demasking, he wouldn't have used such an approach against her, preferring to lose the bet rather than doom the priestess to an unpleasant fate. Shera, after all, had shown her best side and was as morally pure a person as it was possible for a priestess of a true goddess of fertility in the fantasy world, so Stepan did not wish her harm in any form. For the same reason he did not rely on the usual charms, in which he could already be considered a master. Yes, after the joint fun in bed, he was very well attuned to her subtle body and spiritual impression, but there was still a risk that his actions and attempts to break through her defenses would somehow damage a beautiful and really kind woman. He would study this defense, practice it, and maybe afterward try to bewitch her with his own powers, but for the moment Sleepwalker would do all the work.

  The immensely powerful spirit guaranteed not only the inevitability of the impact but also its safety for Shera herself, which was very soothing for the boy's tingling conscience. It seemed that she had agreed to it voluntarily, and they had stiputed everything. The priestess herself also wanted to use the handsome young man in lewd and rather humiliating games, but still, there was some awkwardness. Perhaps it was because Stepan, unlike Shera, felt himself a liar, knowing that he would win the bet, no matter what. Shera also thought so to herself, but saw nothing wrong in it, which paradoxically soothed her opponent, quenched the burning of conscience and not only conscience somewhere in the region of the batt.

  The spirit appeared without special effects, not actually manifesting, but merely letting out a shadow of its presence, using the central totem as a support. Here, is another side benefit of this venture. Once touched by such a powerful spirit, this central totem would rise in quality all at once, becoming an even better beacon and directional signal for spirits willing to cooperate. Such a thing was not in the young man's calcutions, but it was a pleasant surprise..... It was frustrating that it was, well, a surprise, because in the life of a summoner of any kind, surprises during a summoning are what often cut that life short. Well, at least Stepan's not a demonologist. Because here is demonology surprises are really deadly and great happiness is considered, if only for the demonologist, his loved ones, and random passersby within a couple of hundred meters.

  The communication was about the same as with those two, the Shroud of Touch and the Creator of Decisions, but even simpler. Stepan had grown stronger since then, and Sleepwalker was much better able to perceive the images and desires of the summoner. The infinitely indifferent and very ancient something listened to the shaman's appeal without any indication of its attitude to the fact that an ancient and powerful spirit of the realm of dreams and minds was being used in such an untargeted capacity. Perhaps the Sleepwalker had long ago become so enriched in his knowledge that he simply did not care, especially if the costs of the contract were paid to him by the Autogoddess or the System, or even from both sources at once. Under such conditions, why not work, right? And the fact that he's working as a procurer for a meat bag who lives in the real world and wants to get id, doesn't matter.

  The spirit listened to him, disappearing as slowly and carefully as it had appeared, gradually extinguishing its presence in the central totem, as well as in the piece of reality surrounding the clearing that had been affected by its presence. The clearing, which had been just a clearing before, would gradually turn into a point of shamanic power, if not into a man-made source of magic - in the creation of such things Stepan understood only fragmentarily and superficially. To the pce where the worlds of Spheres and Reality converged permanently, which could be both positive and negative factors, depending on the characteristics and properties of the dispcement, what spheres are closer, and how their inhabitants will perceive this proximity. All sorts of malignant crawlies can start flowing like water from a hole in a ship's pting until you plug the hole or until it dissolves. But in general, he, due to the totem system and his rituals, due to the will of the shaman that permeated this pce, will easily take control of such a situation (if the breakthrough is not too serious, and not too scary creatures are coming).

  Many shamans, almost all of them, create a pce like this for themselves in one way or another. As long as they could afford it, and not wander the world as a tumbleweed. Of course, he didn't want to tie himself to one pce, literally growing into it, even if it would give him more power in the current moment, but he didn't need to go to the extreme. Between building a fortress and living in it, shooting from stationary turrets at all sorts of trash, and chaining yourself to that fortress, or even walling up your entire body, except for your face, in a cornerstone, there is a distinct difference and a boundary that someone with his erudition (albeit systematic) cannot cross by accident. With such thoughts, Stepan decided not to miss the chance, and, as soon as the shadow of the Sleepwalker's presence left the ritual gde, he began to saturate it with his own spirit. At that moment he felt as if a semi-transparent wave of something unclear was coming from his side, and his whole body was enveloped in the halo of a spiritual body, which temporarily grew beyond the physical shell, deliberately stretched and enrged at the will of the shaman.

  It was as if he was linking himself to each of the main totems assisted by a third hand which took the form of an almost ordinary hand, only with very long and multi-jointed fingers. Each of the totems could now be called load-bearing, analogous to walls, and he was additionally linking these totems to the terrain, to the clearing soaked with multiple calls. What he had been doing zily and leisurely since settling in the vilge came to its logical conclusion in a swift dash, while the young man was using the unwilling help of the mighty elder spirit that had made the leap possible. To say that the result didn't take long would be a brazen lie, because he had to wait and drain almost all the rest of the reserve, leaving only the minimum necessary for health, so as not to suffer from exhaustion. But he still liked the result, for the shaman had to take two steps backward, falling on the frozen ground with his ass, as the system gave birth to another confirmation of his professional and css growth.

  Received: “basic methods of territorial influences”; “Basics of working with totems”; increased affinity with spiritual realms; the effectiveness of certain methods of shamanic practice has been increased; increased likelihood of acquiring knowledge and properties of the witchcraft branch.

  Recived talents are added to the Pyer's overall status.

  The young man, panting like a horse, only let out something that sounded like self-congratution and then grinned contentedly as he listened to his consciousness. Both promotions, to be frank, were long overdue, especially the second one. He'd been working with totems, in one form or another, almost from his first days, starting in the forest lodge and continuing afterward. As, but the base of this very totemic work avaible in call practice and other directions was very worthy, strong, and deep. Well, or not a pity, but good, that is how to look at it. In any case, the previous actions of the young man, though reted to the totem theme, but not so much stand out in a separate knowledge. It took a small bor feat and a kind of help from Sleepwalker to cross the line, beyond which the System will mark the user's successes and award another line in the status.

  By the way, this trend raises a legitimate suspicion that the higher the leveling, the more difficult it will become to get new lines of knowledge without directly investing talent points. After all, it is difficult to get a recognition of mastering “the basics of something there”, if this something is already included in one or more other knowledge, and not at the level of basics, but much higher. You will have to make a lot of effort to get what you want—oh yes, desired! Because the synergy of knowledge does not go anywhere and even for the highest shaman or master of magic to get “basic techniques of some ruthless bullshit” will be a beneficial aid - because it knowledge will affect all the other knowledge he has, supplement them and make them a little stronger. It is one thing if a gifted person does not know at all except for the starting basic techniques, but if this knowledge has accumuted a lot, the output is co-dependent on the avaible data. Thus, - so it seemed to Stepan, and he saw no reason to think otherwise - the system preserved the value of increasing levels and new talent points, making each upgrade useful both for a first-level novice and for an archmage of the eightieth level and with an ego the size of a skyscraper.

  These thoughts didn't stop the guy from sinking into a trance, assimiting new packets of information, reflexes, tricks, and everything else the system's gifts had brought him. All he could do was order a pair of fire spirits sitting in one of the small totems assigned to this sphere to warm the ground and air around him. He had the improved health property, of course, and it hadn't gone anywhere, but he didn't want to get pneumonia or cold kidneys. And then, he immersed in himself completely, absorbing every bit of what he could absorb, restoring the reserve in passing. Both knowledges could be considered cssic for a shaman, but still on the very edge of the cssics. Not in vain, not in vain the system noted the increasing probability of getting talents of the branch of witchcraft because working with the territory - this is one of those areas that witches and other public is famous for. Not only them, shamans and druids, and most of the different branches of Wild Magic are also almost native to this method, but the key word here is “almost”. No, no, Stepan was not too eager to go into witchcraft, shamanism was much closer to him anyway, but he noted a detail for himself.

  If we talk about the practical benefits of gaining knowledge of totem topics, it simply and uncomplicatedly improved all those areas of work with totems, which Stepan was already engaged in, adding an extra list of new, more advanced tricks. The essence of the totem, its difference from the direct call or use of the house of the spirit, is that the totem, first, is able to strengthen and nourish the spirit dwelling in it in passive or active form, and, secondly, firmly tied to the pce, the point of the real world, to which the totem and binds. In fact, the differences are much more, but the essence is roughly the same: totems always spend time on the “instaltion” after the transfer to a new pce, they are often too slow, cumbersome, designed to py from defense and position, but the effects in them are id in much rger scale than a single summoned spirit. Yes, in the totem can be settled only one spirit, no matter whether it is strong or weak, but in essence, they are most often not a house of the spirit, they are a multi-story of spirits, that simultaneously exists and actively operates a whole bunch of all sorts of entities, co-dependently supporting each other, strengthening and entering into synergy. Or, as an option, the pace of the spirit - one, but strong, which will be cramped in the usual amulet, which is much more rational to settle “comfortably”, and then still and constantly strengthen, support, nourish, in every possible way to use its connection with the totem for the common good. A strong spirit summoned by itself, or the same spirit, but defending the house of the shaman sitting in the totem developed over centuries and constantly improved - it is, as they would say on Earth, two big differences.

  There are plenty of confirmations of such practice. Suffice it to recall a gift totem with a lone sor spirit, delivered from the bounty of the system, which can be supported through that totem in a dozen ways, to strengthen or more purposeful use. Any rge totems often py the role of portable, suitable for transportation without unnecessary complications altar, only a little with reduced functionality. All kinds of nomadic tribes have a particurly vivid representation of this. They cannot bind themselves to a certain pce, they are constantly in motion. Totem allows to combine of the best properties of ordinary houses of spirits and a full-fledged pce of power, no matter whether artificially created by calls or arisen from a natural source. Stepan's problem was that until then he'd looked at totems as more like... ordinary spirit houses, but rger in size and allowing for more flexibility. A key mistake that had caused him to lose much of the benefit of totem practice, as he now realized.

  In his defense, it would be worth saying that the avaible knowledge in this direction was extensive but rather fragmentary. Even though he was able to reach the necessary conclusion much faster, exclusively on his own. And the correct use of totems required a much greater investment of time and effort than Stepan had. At first, when he was still a hermit in the forest, he had time, but he cked the power and understanding of his own gift. Afterward, when his strength had grown, he had already begun to hurry and prepare for going out into the world, putting off ideas for ter. Now he, who was going to winter in the Lower Lyady anyway, had both knowledge and time and even the desire to practice, to try out different directions of work.

  Totem in essence can be any - combat, healing, cursing, protecting, increasing the harvest, and even bewitching. It is quite possible to create a powerful totem with healing spirits and other blessings on the same clearing for the sake of fun and development. The cattle did not get sick, the fields were full of crops, the arable nd was given easily, and there were few pests, that the disease bypassed and all that. He would be able to do his own assignment, if not a diploma project, then a term paper. Still, he was warmly welcomed in this vilge and Stepan wanted to leave something good as a memory before he left, most likely forever. But it would be better not to inform anyone about it, or there would be questions to “just an apprentice”, who by some miracle arranged something that only a senior shaman could do, and not everyone, especially if so quickly.

  The second block of knowledge, dedicated to territorial magic, was much deeper than working with totems. First, because it revealed a branch of influences hitherto practically unknown. Exactly the same ability to strengthen any direction of work, from healing to disguise, as it was with totems, but new directions no less. For example, the ability to reliably bind spirits to terrain, exactly to the terrain, not the totem that will stand on that terrain. Or the ability to summon, create, or even assign from the avaible options, entities of a preserving type, as he did with the now-forgotten grove during his travels, only better and stronger. Creating long-sting effects on the same area, both with a bound spirit to support the effects and in other ways. The technique was obvious: working with the spiritual reflection of the world, when you change it in such a way that the real world is repced by the spiritual one - the same wild and powerful witchcraft in one of its clearest manifestations, even though it is still firmly connected with shamanism.

  There were countless variants of reinforcing the avaible tricks, which was why only the sagging reserve stopped Stepan from plunging into the research process. The same pn with the farewell gift to the whole settlement thanks to this knowledge from a very difficult task, became only a difficult one, demanding more time than resources or personal strength. And why stop at a single idea, if one could conduct several rge-scale territorial calls of a simir type as a training? Say, swamp some piece of terrain, drain it, spur pnt growth, or create a small gde of dead earth - nothing dangerous for the locals, if they decide to take a walk in the woods, but an extremely effective way of pumping up for one humble isekai. Yes, he would pay attention to this direction during the winter, there would be nothing to do anyway. Although taking into account the already existing pns, this thought was doubtful. The young man liked to be engaged in new directions of self-development. No, no kidding, it was the presence of a gift and the opportunity to study what this gift opens up that became for Stepan the outlet that really reconciled him with the new reality, as well as the ck of Internet, hot water, convenient public transportation, and human rights institutions.

  "Oh, damn it, my back is stiff!" His own hoarse voice snapped another bout of lyrical mood, bringing him back to the real world, though it wasn't really his back that hurt, it was just that the shaman took the first opportunity to become alive and breathing again, instead of aloofly observing. "I'll have to make a bench here or something, won't I? Or at least a chair, even if it was made of stone-turned earth. And a heater for this chair, without frills like a massage mode and a built-in vibrator, ugh, fuck."

  He made it home in the te afternoon, greeting Meld with genuine sympathy as he prepared a hot herbal brew from the avaible herbs. The boy, who had received several lectures on pharmacy and herbalism, had memorized a dozen recipes for all occasions and seemed to think he was a bit of a magician. Judging by the way he was so eager to talk, Stepan had no choice but to listen, otherwise, the child would have burst right in front of his eyes. Well, every dog knew about the fact that the new important and very kind priestess had made friends with the no less kind and respected magician Pann now, and it would have been hard to hide it, if they had gone to his house hugging, and Shera had left that house only closer to lunch the next day. Meld was genuinely resentful of Kirik for pulling the boy's ears when he went for a stroll in the vilge.

  “As if I'd choose to peep at you, honorable!” Still rubbing even now the slightly swollen ears, he looked and felt to the spirits sincere in his offense. “That is, yes, I have been, well, who is not without sin, hehehe, yes for the girls who go to the river to spsh water, there, it. But a magician and a priestess of the Life Giver? I'm not like that! He's not that! Why is he looking at me like that?”

  Because she takes care of you, you moron, in his way! - Stepan thought, knowing perfectly well that his attempt to peek the guarding spirits at his dwelling, and even those he had put on full alert in honor of such an important guest, could have struck the poor fellow with a lightning bolt. The Earthling had heard enough about the revenge of Gaia's priestesses, even though he doubted that Shera would have used such heavy artillery on the young voyeur, instead of just chasing him away and scaring him to death. But as it was, it seemed that the boy had been dragged by his ear lobes only prophyctically, because either he wasn't lying at that moment, or, which was also likely, he believed in the purity of his thoughts.

  A short lecture on herbal remedies for chronic bone pain and how to brew them properly - if you don't want to suffer side effects like stomach cramps - ended with an equally short exam, which Meld, not without Stepan's help and guidance, coped with by preparing the brew. The old boatman, who had already passed on his business to his sons who had grown up and married, two of whom had left the vilge to seek a better life, was suffering from severe chronic arthritis and had already gotten used to it. He also liked the daughter of his eldest son, who was also Meld's peer, and, as the boy was sure, he liked her too. mutually, so the d was looking for a reason to butter up to the old man, who drove him away from his favorite granddaughter at every opportunity and did not shoot after him with a shotgun only because of the absence of a shotgun or at least a crossbow. Characteristically, the granddaughter's father did not mind such company for his beloved daughter, though the groom from Meld, a complete orphan with no normal household, was not an enviable one, and that was putting it mildly. The fact that three springs ago this tomboy had pulled out of the warm and treacherous summer Dantra the almost drowned by foolishness Riska, which earned a lot of credit from her family. Only the old patriarch still grumbles and threatens to stick a pitchfork in Meld's ass if he ever sees him again closer than seven versts from his granddaughter.

  The sun was slowly setting. Meld had long ago left to suck up to the old boatman. The reserve of magical powers was a little replenished and Stepan, before going to bed, decided to look at the work of the Sleepwalker, so to speak, almost with his own eyes. One of the spirits, weak and practically useless in battle, was, firstly, really imperceptible for magic vision, being able to pass through primitive protection, and, secondly, it transmitted images qualitatively, allowing the shaman's eyes to look through itself. Not the shaman to look through the spirit's eyes, but the other way around - and the better the shaman could look, the more effective was his symbiosis with the spirit. Well, up to a certain limit, beyond which it would be easier and better for a strong shaman to look through himself.

  Shera ran all day through the vilge huts. looked at the filling of barns and stables, cured a couple of ailments in people and livestock, and some for free. Since Stepan did not offer his services and spent most of the day in the forest, he was not disturbed by such trifles, no other way than by Kirik's request and order, who remembered Pann's caveat about his love of solitude. She had a very useful prayer, which allowed her to find out the truth - at once one could see clearly whether he really had nothing to pay, or whether he was just being pretentious, or whether he really had a serious illness, or whether he wanted a free examination by a healer, or whether he was seriously going to pay off his debt by donating to the temple, as he was going to sell out at the market, or whether he just decided to lie? Unwillingly envy was breaking through because the young man did not have such a good lie detector. Okay, he has. There were, but on one-time contracts, and on permanent service he could not invite and get cool enough spirits, there were always more important things to do.

  Back to Shera. The priestess entered the hut, from which Kirik's distant retives had been dispced for the time of her visit, already at night, having had a good drink. Kirik, clearly embarrassed by the ck of cash to pay for the cured illness of the best cow in the vilge, did his best to offer her some wine from his old stock. To be fair, a cy bottle of the same drink was also in the dinner Meld had brought, so he didn't offend the “honorable magician” either. The priestess didn't get drunk, not even particurly tipsy, but she fell asleep almost instantly, having only changed into her nightgown, washed her face, and said her bedtime prayers. While she was praying, Stepan ordered the spirit to leave the observation point and go up higher.

  Shera didn't enchant the walls of the hut against peeping, though she didn't go to bed carelessly, having covered the bed and the room with some kind of protective-signaling veil. Fortunately, her spirit could travel from below, first diving into the dimension of the spheres and then emerging inside the perimeter. The sleeping woman looked lovely, even erotic, for she slept on her back, and her shirt was thin and seemingly a little too big for her, which made it slip down a little. At the moment when she had fallen into the world of dreams, in that very world she was caught up by the mighty Sleepwalker sent by Stepan's will and the contract of the Autogoddess. At that moment, the shaman was looking at the victim with all his avaible strength, seeming to be preparing to exhaust himself or to drain the already not particurly full reserve, literally draining and adding his intensity and the same characteristic of the spirit-transmitter. And all this, all this effort, the precise knowledge of the moment of the spirit's attack, the knowledge of where and what to look at, what to expect, was still enough, enough to notice.... nothing.

  Even at the maximum level of attention, nothing suspicious could be seen, even when looking at it point-bnk, even knowing exactly what was suspicious was happening right now, right this second. Yes, judging by the aura and the reflection of the priestess in the spiritual world, she is asleep and dreaming. Yes, it's a very vivid dream, but not too vivid, many people in the vilge have much more vivid and clear dreams right at this moment. Yes, the spiritual world in the hut occupied by Shera is a little more active and intense, a little shaky, but that's why she is gifted, even if she is a priestess. Her power, her gift, and the presence of her Goddess influence the surrounding reality, and reality on its reflection in the spheres. He didn't see anything unusual or out of the ordinary, even though he knew exactly what he was supposed to see.

  The system reference, of course, revealed quite a decent description of the Sleepwalker, so Stepan knew and understood with his mind that he would not be able to notice the influence of the spirit, but still hoped to show his coolness. But no, as, to notice his spirit on the contract he can only on the condition that the entire room and hut Shera enclose tracking totems, appropriate the surrounding territory, create a full-fledged rge totem with a team of highly specialized spirits, and much more to do. According to his estimates, he'll be done by the end of winter, if he doesn't get much stronger in the process. Doubly futile efforts also because the spirit, according to the same system reference, will not come in pces where he is so actively waiting. And to notice this ancient chthonic inhabitant of the spheres, moonlighting as a witch doctor at leisure, so that he did not notice the observation ... Stepan couldn't even specute here, he cked the qualifications and understanding of the ws by which the world of high spheres worked.

  When he saw the priestess frowning in her sleep turn over on her other side, he withdrew from contact with the spirit, closed his eyes, and began to meditate, at least for a couple of hours, filling up his reserve. And only when the sucking emptiness of impending exhaustion stopped bothering him did the young man close his eyes. It wasn't Shera's tits he was dreaming about, as one might expect, but a giant sheep in a Superman costume floating in the clouds, resentful of humanity and burning him with sers from its eyes. If this was some kind of omen or great prophecy, it remained incomprehensible to Stepan.

  * * *

  When she agreed on the terms of the bet, Shera promised to drop by Pann in the morning, just to have a few words with him and convincingly prove that he had no time to do anything to her. Primitive (and not only) bewitchments often required close contact between the victim and the recipient, so she was pying into his hands here, giving him a head start, you might say. However, as the Earthman suspected, she was doing it only to make fun of her lover, who was in a hurry and unable to penetrate her armor of divine protection, and who, in fact, could give her a huge head start in this bet even without the use of unbeatable arguments in the form of gift contracts. In any case, Shera had dropped by voluntarily that morning, bringing breakfast with her at the same time, apparently steering Meld away to his, Meld's, happiness. The woman was cheerful, satisfied with life, and blooming, not otherwise, having had a good night's sleep.

  “You're calling now, I suppose, and trying to find a stronger spirit, aren't you?” The sly smile on her face was a little predatory as she tried to anticipate the next steps of a weak healer faced with an impossible task. “I don't understand your craft very well, they didn't talk much about shamans in the temple, so you correct me if I'm wrong. By the way, you're not going to do magic by the river, are you? I'm praying for a mild winter there tomorrow at the boat dock. The southernmost inch of the vilge nd is the best pce for this prayer, so that the cold northern winds don't disturb, but the warm southern winds ennoble Her will. If you're pnning something, set aside at least a week so we don't disturb each other. Just by the river, not at all, of course, all right, Pann?”

  In response to her provocative remarks and attempts to throw him off bance, or even to make him hurry, the young man made an irritated face, but in reality, he suppressed a light and patronizing smile. She was just in time to tell him about the ritual: he would have a pce to call without Dantra, but he had some pns for the river and its banks, and they could be postponed without any problems on his part. Stepan was going to go upstream, to a wild bank, where people did not often go to summon one rather specific and rare river spirit, which without precise instructions and a recipe for offerings would be a hell of a lot to find. The matter is important but bearable, the main thing is to get there before the ice takes the river completely, which is already quite close. Every now and then frost appears in the morning, but snow is not coming yet, and the river, though bckened with water, is not in a hurry to get into the fetters of ice. Shera was just in time because the spirit pnned to be summoned could react aggressively to the power of the deity too close to the pce of the call. If he hadn't dragged it into the water, it would have spshed all of them, and the water was very cold nowadays.

  "It's not a problem, I'll do the call these days in the forest." Shrugging, the shaman agreed, receiving a grateful and chaste kiss on the cheek, and then continued, carefully choosing words to avoid outright lies. "And our bet will not go anywhere. Yes, I won't hide it, and it's silly with you and your erudition, Shera: a weak healer, who has been learning to summon healing entities all his life, the spirits of feelings and passions will be reluctant to listen. In such cases, it would be smarter to spend more time preparing the call and strike for sure, so that there would be at least some chances. This will be smarter than many weak and worthless attempts."

  Judging by her reaction, the priestess didn't suspect anything, though she didn't seem to keep her lie detector constantly active. She was obviously gd that the river had been ceded without any arguments, but not too much, because the vilgers had told her that the shaman only went to the forest to call, almost every day, and only came near the river a couple of times, for a short time. Their pleasant conversation and a short lecture about what religious rituals of Gaia's service were connected with rivers and water, which were ordered by typical vilgers. Shera wasn't lying about the fact that even underwater mermaids offered prayers to her goddess, but as a nd dweller, she didn't know much about the subject. Nevertheless, she knew more about the subject than a simple priestess from somewhere where neither the Dantra nor the Mtra carried its waters - river and river-reted prayers were understandably popur in that region.

  “Well, thanks for the company, you and Kirik for not skimping on the bread and feast.” Wiping her hands and face of the remnants of fresh pie, the woman got ready to go about her business. “I'll see you ter, dear, but I won't wish you luck in your endeavor.”

  “I can't figure out how I'm not going to lose this bet, dear Shera, so I won't ask the spirits for your luck either.” He replied, scrutinizing the priestess's face as she said the key phrase that had been inspired to her by a powerful spirit. He answered, scrutinizing the face of the priestess, who at the moment of uttering the key phrase, inspired to her through dreams by a powerful spirit, slightly squinted her eyes, for a moment becoming as if somewhat sleepy. “Well, good luck with your prayer, we'll meet again.”

  The priestess didn't show any sign of being unwell, except for a brief moment of drowsiness, but nodded looking at the young man thoughtfully as she rose from the table. Unhurriedly, and clearly showing off, she headed for the door, but instead of stepping through it, she closed the deadbolt, resting her hands on the barrier, bending at the waist, and jutting out her buttocks. With an enticing left-right movement of her ass, Shera half-turned around, looking at the young man still sitting at the table with a conspiratorial and teary gaze.

  “Well, Pann, don't pull the donkey by the nostrils, or shall I give you another hint? Come on, hurry up and stick it in, my dear, I've got things to do.” And, slightly squinting her eyes, she threatened sternly. “Or I'll help myself with my fingers right here in front of your eyes, and you sit there like a fool with a bone in your pants. Come on, come on, move quickly, pull up the dress, and go, go, go!”

  The Sleepwalker does not put in any scripts or special wishes, although he can, but the contract does not stipute it in any way. So now Shera behaves as her consciousness and subconsciousness tell her to, only trying to have sex with a familiar shaman, and if he suddenly refuses, to masturbate herself, as long as it is in front of his eyes. In such a state she has no questions about the reasons for her desires and why they suddenly appeared, but her consciousness does not fade, and therefore she remembers her usual pns, affairs, and schemes, which is why she hurries and orders him to hurry. Biting her lip, fming with excitement, she stares at him eagerly, almost hurrying him with enticing movements of her buttocks.

  Stepan didn't hesitate immediately joining her. He only activated the spirits concealing from the sounds and closed a slightly more advanced distraction circuit, so in the next couple of hours, if not seriously aiming for it, a non-gifted person could not even look at his house. The woman was already more than aroused, and her active thrusting and moving in a unified rhythm allowed her to finish even faster than her partner. With a hoarse moan, she thrust forward sharply, now pressing her whole body against the door, her breasts pressed against it, which made it a little uncomfortable for Stepan to finish.

  Apparently realizing his predicament and not wanting to test the door for strength, Shera pulled away and led him by the hand to the dining table, on which she rested her hands, bending over again. Even though he knew what to expect, it still shocked Stepan that from the outside he saw no sign of influence in her behavior, save for the fact that she was going against their bet and the very sudden emergence of this desire of hers to fuck. Increasing his onsught and making the sturdy oak piece of furniture falter, the earthling reached his first peak, pouring into the greedy gut of the pussy clenching around him. Growling with a mixture of pleasure and desire, the priestess slid some of the dishes to the edge of the table, miraculously not dropping anything that might have broken, settling her still-covered tits on the surface of the table, allowing him to continue to take her from behind. What kind of permission was there, though? Demanding and ordering him to take all of her without stopping or slowing down!

  The second orgasm was less hasty; it came on Stepan softly and inevitably, like an avanche, and then, due to the newly discovered tantric magic, it went to the hoarsely breathing Shera, spreading first in the aura and then in the body of the convulsively trembling priestess. A new ecstasy caught her on the inhation, causing her to choke on her words and sprawl like a jellyfish on the wooden surface. The sweat covering her body and the process gradually brought her hair and dress to a state after which any fool would notice and realize what she had been doing in the company of the shaman.

  "Turn over, please, Shera," Stepan asks her with all the attendant politeness, running his hands along her back and bare thighs, adjusting and lowering her dress. "And at least bare your breasts. Your breasts are beautiful and it will be sad if I don't manage to look at them and squeeze your softness in my palms."

  She did turn over, leaned back against the table, and answered the request with an unreadable look from under half-closed shes, clearly in the pleasure of the ecstasy that had just passed through her. She smirked a satisfied smile, and in a few movements the priestess slid the colr of her dress down, exposing her tits, and began not to wrinkle them, but simply to stroke them, fingertips touching the rge and engorged pink nipples.

  "You men is all about tits, but at least you can ask nicely, almost poetically, like in Luthind's smutty novels. No, don't answer, I don't want to know if you learned to make a woman feel good, otherwise, I'll start reading them myself, since you've learned so well." She looks demandingly, even accusingly a little, because she has obviously already had time to look at those who preferred to look not at her face, but at her tits. "Well, look, here are my tits for you, Pann, so take them in your hands and let's do it again, but let's hurry up, okay? I've really got something to do today, I can't waste any time, mg, yeah, that's it, that's it, honey, that's it, that's it!"

  It was beyond him to refuse her such a request, so Stepan returned to the even movements, only now he could look at the priestess rolling her eyes in pleasure, at her shaking breasts, as well as touch and fondle those shaking tits full of life and beauty. For the third time, they finished apart. This time he still couldn't stand it and surrendered first, still managing to come out of her in orgasm and thus cum on her belly instead of inside. It's funny, but one of the blessings of the goddess of fertility allows not to let out the given seed from the body, literally distilling it into magic, restoring strength and grace, if the priestess does not want to give birth to life, while the stains from the dress will be much more difficult to get out, as Shera does not possess household magic, and her religion allows her to clean her body and clothes with prayer only in case of extreme need and not on a whim. Well, according to her. Stepan preferred to believe.

  With quiet curses about the men who were always jizz everywhere, the priestess quickly and decisively brought the guy sitting on the table to another orgasm with her hand, and gave herself a third, hastily rubbing her pussy with her fingers and cumming in just a few seconds. But the satisfied smirk on her face showed that she even enjoyed this moment, regardless of the impact of the Sleepwalker. Shera's handjob was very fast and skillful. He felt the practice: One hand was continuously working, every now and then changing the speed and strength of compression, and the second hand was gently squeezing the scrotum, sometimes pressing a little. Under such pressure, the guy let down on her palms so quickly, as if there had not been three full rounds before, which earned a satisfied and triumphant smile of Shera. And he was ready to swear to the spirits that there was no magic in it, only practice and skill.

  Then there was the boring tidying up. He felt obliged to help the priestess in any way he could. Especially in cleaning off the traces of her semen, because there was no better conduit for curses or other harmful effects. But he also provided heated water, a clean cloth for wiping, and a fresh perfume to banish sweat and grease stains from her dress. For this Shera gave a farewell kiss, no longer on the cheek, nestled one st time with her whole body and still naked breasts, and only after tucking them back into the dress and cing up the ties did she become a little drowsy, as if she had dozed off on the move for a second, and left the shaman's dwelling.

  "Goodbye, Pann, and I'll come back to ugh at you and your efforts a little!" She said goodbye and walked back towards the vilge, almost flying. She looked so pleased. "See you ter!"

  If she had noticed any signs of the recent intimate retionship, she hadn't let herself be aware of them, because the Sleepwalker's work was over, and now the behavioral program he'd created was folding in on itself, forever hiding those memories, events, and suspicions from any eyes or thoughts. If the still unexecuted program and the trigger-activator could be noticed in her mind, it was possible, though with a creak, but after the program was closed... Stepan didn't know the ways and couldn't assume it, unless it was something quite beyond the limits, from the category of a direct conversation with the soul, but he knew such high matters only in terms of the fact that it was possible, in theory, but not for him.

  “And all the best to you, dear Shera.” He spoke into the distant back of the priestess who squeezed him, trying not to smile too contentedly as he closed the door and ducked back into the cozy and fresh-smelling pine needles, which banished extraneous odors, the semi-darkness of the house. “Well, the first phase of the experiment can be considered successfully closed, and the first of the quest stages admirably accomplished, to my deep satisfaction.”

  The urge to talk to himself successfully passed five seconds ter and the rest of his monologue was exclusively mental. It was a good day, a beautiful morning, and sex with the use of tantric practices filled the reserve to the brim. And for dessert, he received a system message about the level that had risen. The third consecutive act of love in the company of the same priestess had lowered the amount of experience once again, but yesterday's feat with totems had also added a lot of experience, allowing him to break through to the fifteenth and get the talent point he needed. After cleaning up the dishes, not waiting for Meld to arrive, but leaving the rest of the cleaning to him, he walked leisurely into the forest, to his clearing, and there, sitting in a meditative pose with his warm cloak under his ass, he began to choose.

  The new level opened new, previously absent in the list of knowledge, among which there were some very interesting options. But his choice, even after being checked by the help, still hadn't changed. This time, out of all the remaining options of “what-was-needed-yesterday”, Stepan chose so many times postponed combat calls, having achieved the status of “advanced practice of combat calls”. The new knowledge was massive, but at the same time surprisingly familiar, as if not learned but remembered, giving new contacts, new summoning techniques, new spirits, and many different little things, synergizing with curses, totems, and even territorial influences. Healing, hermitage, and spells also received some special bonuses from the synergy.

  For example, one of the spirits who could inflict passion and lust could not do so subtly or harmlessly, but could, with the right preparation, strike a maddening animal lust for mating across the square, temporarily turning an unprotected crowd of enemies into a small or even rge orgy. The hermit's skills suggested a certain number of spirits, mostly concealment or ambush spirits, which could help in a loner savage attack on an expeditionary corps of civilized conquistadors. The combination of “developed practice of combat call” and “the knack of a martial call” was perfectly complementary, almost immediately inserting new data into the already existing reflexes and training of an experienced combat shaman. Indeed! Even tantric practices in combination with combat calls opened all sorts of things, like a trick in which two shamans together merge their bodies and spirit in passionate coitus, multiplying their own strength and casting in two minds, but with one and enhanced-powerful aura. Fun technique, but it requires a partner, and also an experienced shamaness, and preferably an apprentice. You also need to trust your partner. Otherwise, it can turn out offensive. Other trifles, such as long distance blows from a distance of many kilometers, also pleased the shaman and introduced variety into tactical schemes, but remembered for some reason it was this technique of pair kamnie for very close personalities.

  The next in line to be pumped would have to be combat knacks, but they, as, have not yet increased, and there are not enough mere crumbs to increase. Stepan's Spirit and Source are sufficiently developed, but he cks literally a single unit of characteristics in the total sum of stats. If he could stop those two assholes from dying during the healing marathon, that would be just fine... Too bad, but why bother with the lost profits? It's not the st quest with a reward in the form of free characteristics, and even if not, then on the twentieth he will still increase a few attributes simply by reaching ten levels. After that, it will be possible to freely invest his talent in such desirable knowledge, which will make him not Artur Rimbaud in company with John Rembo, but a person much more dangerous and able to stand up for himself.

  With a satisfied nod to his thoughts, Stepan went about his usual routine, calling, summoning, checking new contacts, and, of course, relying more actively on his totems and the territory under his control. He gradually strengthened the territory even more, consolidating power and stabilizing the weakened border between reality and spheres. He did not close or put obstacles, but stabilized it, making this rapprochement as controlled and profitable as possible for him, strengthening his calls, without interfering with the others at best. And if he deliberately shifted some constants, he also reduced the effectiveness of other people's magic, strengthening himself and weakening his enemies. However, it would be better for him not to check it in practice, because fuck him to fight with those enemies who would force him to unpack such severe artillery.

  By the time evening came, he'd reached one of the new contacts the system had given him exhaustive information about. It wasn't the most desirable of these new contacts, but it was the one for which he had all the right offerings at the ready. In the spirit world, he looked like a humanoid figure with the blurred features of an upright lizard wrapped in wisps of smoke, smoke rather than darkness. A spirit of war and confgration, of battles and struggles. He was not skilled in remote magic or attacks on real targets from the spirit world, but he was perfectly embodied by the infusion of power and could become very material. A sort of summoned brute, only ghostly, who could become invisible - that is, fall back into the spirit world at will - and cause a smokescreen in which he became stronger. He's a pretty effective creature, though his summoning will eat up reserves like a taxman's paycheck. Anyway, he can be paid in advance and comes up pretty fast for an emergency one-time summoning.

  This spirit was considering the possibility of transition into permanent service, as well as resettlement in one of the spirit houses or binding on a permanent contract by analogy with the already existing minor knowledge. It would be as the shaman wished. The only thing that the spirit will not go for is the transfer by inheritance through blood. His service should end with the death of the summoner or st forever if the summoner wishes and can live this eternity. Well, that would be offensive to some, but Stepan does not care about such a restriction, and the lizard has a list of offerings and sample images for the most favorable contract. A very unusual spirit, simir to that moonshooter, only even more attached to an actual living being, his image, which spirit took after himself. Though, how do we know, maybe his base was alive once, just over time finally ceasing to be a ghost and becoming a spirit? This is also a debatable question, perhaps even a reason for a separate study, but to conduct it young scientist will be only when there will be nothing else to do.

  Not for the foreseeable future, anyway.

  The whole time until the evening when the sun began to set behind the horizon Stepan did not even think about spending meta-skill, giving himself time to think. There were a lot of options to choose from. The useless ones among them were not that significant in number, mostly thanks to Autogodess, but he wanted to get literally everything. He wanted to get a mini-map. The ability to evaluate. Increase the peaceful development. Increase in experience for each day lived and who knows what else. He has only one talent point, with a maximum of five, so he needs to choose it right away, not just by taking some meta-skill, but also by developing it. This bonus will be more useful on a three than on a one, it's an indisputable fact.

  The second call of the Sleepwalker went without any surprises, literally mirroring the st one. The shadow of presence, reliance on the altar totem, and Stepan's controlled territory receive images of the target and leave without saying goodbye. This time his touch on the totem also did some good, further saturating the call gde with spiritual power, but that was the end of it, there were no new gifts from the System. Having shaken off his clothes and his cloak, the shaman rose to his feet, and sighed wistfully, estimating that his reserve was only a quarter full, which seemed too small to him more and more often (some Freudian parallels run through this thought), and went back to the house. Already there, lying on the bed, he started... no, not to choose a meta-skill, but to watch Shera.

  The spirits had already habitually passed through her protective prayers and then began to study their target and help Stepan in that study. This time he didn't even try to look for traces of the Sleepwalker's work, realizing the futility of this venture, and concentrated on studying the protective prayer against all kinds of charms. Shera would ideally be lying not in his bed, but in his calls' clearing, surrounded by scanning totems and a bunch of summoned spirits. But it was unlikely that she would agree to undergo such an examination, even without his bet with her, so he had to use this method of remote examination.

  Not without success. If you really looked closely, the protection became visible. It wasn't hidden in the depths of the aura, to be honest, it remained in pin sight. The essence of prayer was held and supported by the spiritual marker, which provided a connection to the goddess and made the priestess, well, a priestess. A rather primitive and straightforward thing, as is often the case with divine magic, it remained extremely effective and flexible, which is also characteristic of divine miracles. That was the whole paradoxical nature of clerical enchantments. The energy power of divine magic is higher than that of ordinary magic, which is why the priests primarily care about the Spirit and to a much lesser extent Sensitivity. Power, Source, or Control was not indifferent, but they could be neglected. The main thing was to ensure the connection between the divine will and the body of the priest and through it the contact with the world. Then the very efficiency of energy came into py, due to which the prayers worked and worked effectively with minimal control from the outside.

  In a rough way, the prayer was building itself up and ensuring the subtlety of the weave, simply by relying on the divine aspects and will. Therefore, even a novice of Gaia could curse in such a way that not every master would take it off. However, most of those who refused would simply not want to deal with the punishment of the goddess. The main thing is to pass the prayer through yourself, to strengthen its right to stay in reality, and the divine magic itself will gather in the necessary construct. Well, if we are talking about lower influences. The more powerful the prayer, the more complicated it is, then higher priests need high characteristics even in non-core areas to do it. It's just that the higher priests, if necessary, will add these characteristics by divine will. In Shera's case, her defense was simple and powerful. The pure will of the goddess, which either completely nullified or qualitatively weakened any kind of charm or, with less efficiency, mental influence, and in most cases also warned the bearer of the blessing about the “attack”.

  Thus, with the universality characteristic only of divine magic, any sufficiently weak charms were blocked or weakened, regardless of the type and school of influence! Will it be the charms of the healing section, which will increase the release of hormones and sensitivity of erogenous zones? Or, let's say, through the usual witchcraft for passion for a separate person? Or maybe something from the exotic category, like the use of anchor-envolt in the style of famous on earth and quite existing in the magical world of voodoo dolls? No matter the method, as long as the defense could detect the impact, it would either reflect it or weaken and warn the victim, period. Shera had every reason to consider herself the winner in her and naive Pann's dispute, to count in advance and therefore not to worry. A weak shaman imprisoned in the call of healing spirits could not break through such a thing.

  For the smiling Stepan, her opinion of her victoriousness was, to put it mildly, an exaggeration. He might well have been able to bypass the defense instead of pushing it through, to trick it, to fold several separate elements into a whole, or simply to attack from the depths of the spiritual pne so that the defense would not be disturbed. Only now, looking at this seemingly not-too-complicated protection blessing, seeing all its weaknesses, and realizing how easily it could bypass them, he realized that he could really consider himself a master, albeit a master of love charms. The ease with which he had found all these weaknesses and mapped out routes to bypass the defenses of his own was a little.... no, not frightened, but a little startled. Combining the two initial css knowledge for a shaman - call and dialog - and the same maximum developed practice of enchantments, which was not initial and mandatory for the css, but advanced, gave such an effect. It would be a good time to maximize the same martial call so that he wouldn't feel so inferior and a pervert simultaneously! Although a master in the direction of a martial witch is probably an even greater perversion of common sense.

  So, picking up the keys to the defense, as well as looking for ways to open the defense and deceive the prayer network so as not to fall out of the image of a weak apprentice-healer, the young man slowly took the spirits back, let them go back to their native dimension or returned them to one of the links of the neckce, and then exhaled tiredly. Such observation is really exhausting, not even physically or energetically, but just mentally. Looking through the eyes of a spirit is not particurly pleasant, a real headache, but if you look with your own eyes, only through the perception of such an entity, and even try to analyze the auric and spiritual analysis, then it turns out quite masochistic. The head cannot stand it, especially if the reserve shows the bottom, and before he was actively and fruitfully calling all day long.

  In the st minutes before going to sleep, Stepan opens his status and, still hesitating, raises his most gging meta-skill, gaining “Peaceful Development II”. There were better options, but Stepan will have to use this meta-skill all the time, one way or another, unless, of course, he gets a hit of the isekai piss in his head and goes to adventure and gain exp in the cssical sense: burning out all the scum with his big fireballs. Still, one should be very alternatively gifted to voluntarily stick one's head into the jaws of dragons, if there is an opportunity to settle down peacefully and without unnecessary conflicts in the middle of nowhere and gain strength in the same middle of nowhere. Yes, Stepan didn't succeed at first, but he found a pce where they didn't try to sughter him quietly, didn't he?

  With this thought, the young man, who was not superstitious and, in general, quite rational in life, had a hard time suppressing the urge to get out of bed and spit over his shoulder, knocking on the wooden chair at the same time. Instead, he turned on his side, falling into the power of the dream realm and the spirits that reigned there. He dreamed of cyclopean whales in steel armor and with fortresses on their backs and sides, from which a troop decorated in feathers and gold was leaping onto the fming city below.

  SpoilerT.N. spit over his shoulder, knocking on the wooden - It's kind of a superstition If you said something good that may not come true. Do these things just to be on the safe side.

  [colpse]* * *

  It was a sunny and good morning that started with Shera being swamped to the brim with work and therefore not coming to his house for breakfast, which was why his pn to earn another meta-skill had gone the way small people's great pns usually did. After scratching the back of his head and eating a breakfast of fresh cottage cheese - Kirik's wife was considered the best baker in the three vilges around him - the boy talked a little with Meld, who had been promoted from “useless parasites” to “dumb asses” by the squabbling boatman, sending him away and going to the clearing. To works. The bet is a bet, but grinding is still the eternal companion of the gamer ... It is good at least without farming mobs, if not considered for farming constant and preferably varied use of the gift.

  “I should have upgraded that skill a lot sooner.” He grumbled, finishing the first of the day's tasks, at the same time studying the increase to the experience bar, though not huge, but much more noticeable than expected from an ordinary and almost routine task. “Where would I accumute the talents to do all this for free and without pitfalls? Quests from Autogoddess do not suggest.”

  He wasn't afraid to speak here, only his own spirits could hear him, but he bit his tongue anyway, simply because it was possible to ask the world itself, the wind, the ground beneath his feet, and the stars in the sky, if you wanted to and if you were very strong. Of course, it's already paranoia, but it's better not to talk to yourself, especially if you're going to go out to a civilization more developed than a remote vilge. Or else he would mention some Satan in passing, and he would be immediately prescribed life-giving heat baths and a stake in his ass for demon worship. No, no, his ass is not for the stake, it is better to really learn to filter the talk and watch himself.

  SpoilerT.N. bit the tongue - stop talking abruptly

  [colpse]Evening came suspiciously quickly, but by then Stepan was already drained of reserves, tired, and quite pleased with the work he'd done in renegotiating the old deals and updating his set of low-to-mid-tier combat summons. What he wasn't happy about was the fact that he was gradually starting to balk at the resource problem, the ck of proper and rare reagents for offerings. If with small, weak spirits he could ignore this problem due to affinity, marking of spheres, and developed dialog, due to correct calls and carefully calibrated methods of invocation, the higher he climbed, the more he realized the problem of any gifted person - the bare gift does not pull out. You need resources, special compositions, and rare reagents, which are constantly cking. In principle, he knew what could be done about it, how to fix or compensate for the situation, but still unpleasant: the spirit of night darkness, dumbness, silence, and merciless hunting, able to be summoned only outside the sunlight or moonlight, but in the open air, could well serve as a trump card even in a battle against a master of combat magic. Power, speed, camoufge, a few extremely unpleasant and specific abilities, and the price of summoning and treaty, which could not be beaten by a mere infusion of the reserve or even blood sacrifice - you need rare varieties of berries, Night Flowers of R'ars, which shine in the night darkness only once in three years, you need Bloody Stone, soaked with the pain and anger of prisoners and sve borers suffering in the lumber camps.

  You need it all, but there is nowhere to get it, because you need money and connections to send the order and get what you want, and that will attract attention and raise questions, especially in the case of the Bloody Stone. It's a vicious circle that's not easy to get out of, but there are ways to compensate. For example, his ability to drag retively simple offerings deeper into the spirit world, giving them directly to contracted entities and thus increasing the value of the sacrifice. Or affinity marks, which allow him to bring down prices and requests, to bring into submission proud and vicious creatures, which otherwise would have tried to eat him. And just everyday and routine work, appeals, conversations, dialog, in the course of which the demands above the mountains are gradually reduced to the height of a hill at most. The same T'ir-Arau, as this spirit used to call itself, having woven the concept of its images into a full-fledged name, to which it was accustomed to responding, Stepan would be able to induce cooperation... after a month and a half of regur persuasions as if he wanted to invite a girl for a date, and not an evil spirit for a fight to summon

  It's just that before when Stepan was struggling with something in his development, it was only his weakness, ck of time, or insufficient understanding. But now he has both understanding and strength, and even time, but now he also cks materials, the ck of which will require him to spend extra time again. That's why the offense. If he had everything he wanted or at least part of it, the leveling would immediately accelerate, though not by orders of magnitude, but still very much. Ugh, the young isekai was pissed off, as if he had run into a paywall in his favorite game, and not even online! Foolishness and pride, he realized it himself, he just couldn't accept it. If he didn't have enough gold in a computer session, he could always go to clean up some dungeons, but this was not a game, here he would be cleaned up easily.

  Adult life has caught up with you, my friend, both on Earth and here, your paycheck is not enough for anything, and rare stuff is expensive or completely unreachable. The evil thoughts didn't stop him from heading back to the house, where Meld had already managed to leave food, clean up, and quietly take off before they found him a job. At least someone is doing well in life, thought the young man, who involuntarily envied his temporary servant. He has love, worries, and pure intentions, and not all this. He could just forget about his pns, stay in Lyady, marry a prettier girl, and go on living.

  The thought gave the earthling goosebumps, so much so that he seemed to himself at that moment a dull shit. Nothing, all these difficulties are surmountable, and he was covered simply because of the fact that before it was given to him development was easier, but it is not strange that gradually it became easier to complicate. And what the fuck kind of difficulty was that? If he dares to compin about what he now calls “increasing the difficulty of development” to some local mage of the rank of master or so, the tter will give him a kick in the face, interspersed with even more bizarre swearing. Well, this is only if he will not have the opportunity to quietly handcuff Stepan to the medieval-magical analog of the hitter, and then methodically and with interest to open the prisoner in search of a way to connect the system for himself too. He sincerely doubted that all this was even possible, but he was not going to underestimate human determination, and he believed in the cruelty, meanness, cunning, and greed of any reasonable creature, probably more sincerely than Shera believed in Gaia.

  "What are you thinking, Pann, why are you looking at me with sad eyes, what are you thinking about?" The Priestess asked with undisguised irony, drinking a strengthening brew with mint and honey, brewed by Stepan, by the way. "Are you thinking of surrendering to the mercy of the victor?"

  “You will not, oh treacherous one, for I will not give up without a fight!” He put the cheerfulness and smile back on his face, and lightened up a little, trying not to ugh too much at the woman who had already lost, only not realizing it. “But seriously, I was just having a thought, including our argument. No, no, I'm not refusing and I'm not going to change the terms, it's just a question. If you don't want to, then don't answer, I won't pry. But, uh. where did you get that kind of bias in the first pce? Where did it come from? Are they common to all priestesses, or is it personal? Well, for future reference, just so I know.”

  The woman was not offended, though she did not answer at once, thinking for a moment and casting Stepan a thoughtful look from under her drooping eyeshes. It seemed to the young man that she was not so much reluctant to answer the question as surprised that she had been asked it. The surprise was far from unpleasant, but for a moment it seemed to him that he had overreacted. But that moment passed, and with it came back the smile, happy and cheerful, infectious in its radiance, when you can't help but smile back.

  “Well, let our girls hide it as much as they want, but I know I'm not the only one, although it's my favorite passion, my favorite spice in bed.” After a little more thought, she was about to dive into the maelstrom, continuing the story. “You're a good guy, a real rarity, so I'll tell you, but I'll also ask you, um, not to share my... not exactly a secret, but not a story for everyone. I'm not bad at penitential decrees, they come easily to me. I first experienced my passion when I was just a brat, just taken as a novice. The same wandering priestess noticed me, a simple vilge-gifted girl, with little of that gift, but loving life and appreciating kindness. She took me away from home, peacefully and without any nastiness, having spoken to my father, my mother, and even to me. Though I was fourteen winters old, I already understood life, realized that I would be better and calmer in the temple, and my parents would have one less mouth to feed."

  It was obvious that Shera spoke about the past not with sadness, but with warmth and truly bright memories. At least there were no clichés or old wounds, no promises of revenge or dispys of human vileness, treachery, or cruelty, but Stepan was pleased with this attitude to life. So he listened to her words with all his attention, trying to plunge into history with her, to understand and follow her words, literally listening to her spirit with his own spirit. With proper development in this direction can be quite skillful to feel the lie without any mind-reading or active magic, completely unnoticed from the outside. The skill will be priceless at any negotiation, where they are used to defending themselves against cssical magic or even prayers of all kinds, but to witchcraft and shamanic methods, perhaps, not.

  "It was a hungry year then, and the previous one wasn't much better, the barns were empty, and the taxes had been reduced, but only by a quarter. The Baron was a greedy bastard, so if it hadn't been for the Life-Giver's servants coming to help at the end of that winter, it might have ended in starvation." And here she let out a little rage, old and regurly fed by the fmes of fresh examples, which expined to Stepan the reason why she'd got into Kirik's favor and got him a reduction in taxes. "Anyway, I left home with a pure heart, and on the way me and Aunt Vavia, she asked me to call her that instead of the venerable priestess, were met by four roadside thieves. I realize now that they were yesterday's peasants, driven by hunger and taxation to the brink, stepped over it, and then did not want to stop. But then, oh, Pann, you cannot imagine how frightened I was then! They knew the priestess and often saw the colors of the Life-Giver in the fields and on the paths, but they were either foolish or had lost their fear because of impunity. They did not dare to touch Aunt Vavia, they only told her to leave the squeaker and me to amuse them, and to go in peace if she did not want any trouble."

  What nice people, indeed! If anything struck Stepan in this story, it was that the woman was able to forgive these men, and even the guilt was not too heavy. However, time heals, and Shera herself, since she was sitting here with him, and not shining her bones in some ditch, having perished in childhood, had definitely avoided close acquaintance with those “desperate and confused”. He didn't risk interrupting the beautiful woman who was pouring out her soul to him, looking ahead of him with a thousand-leagues stare, not even out of fear, but because of the sprouts of tact he had.

  “This is where the priestess, full-fledged and even more powerful than I am now, had her anger break through the shroud of calm.” The storyteller hummed and refilled her potion, soaking her throat. “She confessed to me ter when I had already received the sanctuary, that she had never known the prayer so deeply before. She gave them Penance, the very Penance of the Overflow of Passion, all at once. They retreated at first, then stepped forward, fearing nothing, ready to throw themselves like wild beasts. Vavia just pulled her dress off her chest and showed her tits to them all, and they... I remember it for the rest of my life. Here they were still coming at us, with axes and knives, and then in a moment, they were already on their knees, on the ground wriggling out of their bones in pleasure. Four healthy and evil bastards, strong, desperate, and deadly. I was not a little girl, I knew what it meant to meet a dashing man on the way. And there they were at her feet, unable to stand up, unable to hold their weapons. I remembered it, it struck me to the heart. And even though there were many other things on my way, it was then, as you said, that my passion began to grow, the seeds were sown. That's the story, Pann, but don't tell it to the others, okay?”

  He could only nod like a dummy, cursing his curiosity. It wasn't that he was afraid of the secret he'd gotten, but it wasn't funny or funny or even intimate, but sad and, well, personal, as if he'd dug into someone else's underwear. He had expected to hear piquant details of the amusements of young novices, but got a confession about his difficult childhood, parting from home and the deadly danger on the local roads. He, too, had met unkind people on the way, but not four, but five, and it ended not so “harmless” for them as the priestess had punished the four criminals.

  “That's quite a story. For my part, I can only promise that I won't tell it to anyone.” Both out of decency and because it's impossible to tell such secrets with friends over a beer in a tavern because of the ck of friends. “Alright, enough about the past for today, I wanted to ask you something else. Shera, would you kindly jerk me off with your big tits?”

  Again the familiar expression on the beautiful face, the slight surprise, repced by a moment of drowsy ziness, only to return with raised eyebrows and slightly wider eyes. A moment and the surprise was repced by a conspiratorial grin, a bitten lip, and undisguised passion. Shera stood up from the table and began to pull off her clothes in a demonstrative and unhurried manner. This time she had her business for the day completed, and there was no need to rush. When she was naked, she twirled around on her fingertips as if dancing for a single spectator, making some snide remarks to Stepan, who was staring at her mesmerized.

  "Oh, you're a rascal, Pann. You didn't have any migrants from Kuordemar in your hamlet, did you? Or such fantasies that I don't even know?" Seeing the bewilderment in her lover's gaze, she only shakes her head and sighs deliberately, showing her fatigue from other people's illiteracy. "When tits are pulled along the dick and lips help, on the very tip, this in the big and scary world outside the forest farms is called a Kuordemar-style titjob. In the capital of the Isnd Kingdom, you know, humans, newts, and mermaids live literally side by side, separated by the coastline. And the water-breathing people of the shoals have maidens, the upper part of them, as beautiful as the beauties of the humans. And they also have a slightly different morality and mermaids usually see no problem in earning nd money by selling the pleasure given by their bodies. Except for their bodies, I remind you, humans are only on top - mouth, chest, and stomach, and below the belt are already scales and a rge fishtail. So that to offer a mermaid, without unnecessary problems, inconvenience, risk of drowning and waste of time can only mouth and tits, most often combined. That's why, Pann, it's called a Kuordemar blowjob...

  The priestess not only enlightened the interlocutor about the cultural traditions of the surrounding world, but also leisurely pushed him to sit on the bed, she kneeled down and without much forepy began first actively and confidently sucking, and then covered the already moistened cock with her breasts, hiding it in her tender embrace. She folded her hands under her breasts, her whole torso creating a movement, caressing Stepan in a way he had never tried before in his life. On Earth, he had only seen such entertainment in porn, even though he was not stuck in incels, unlike his chosen namesake. The young man was filled with a mixture of soft and quiet pleasure, not as rushed as yesterday morning, but also a slight and slightly absurd regret that Shera helping herself with her lips, had temporarily interrupted his lecture on peace. What a nerd of a nerd, even at a time like this to listen to the local Wikipedia!

  However, she quickly stopped helping herself with her mouth, acting exclusively with her powerful priestly tits and hands, which those tits guided and squeezed. It seems that she simply disliked blowjobs as such. The sensations were not so strong if compared to the cssic types of lovemaking, but exotic and exciting due to the unusualness. And just looking at the fact that the woman without any extra thoughts at all began to fulfill such a request, even without seeing anything abnormal, suddenly turned him on so much that he poured into the hollow between the two spheres after only a couple of minutes. And judging by the smile of this pervert, she even liked it. She blossomed and, changing her position slightly, took her breasts in her hands, starting to squeeze him again.

  “Mmm, you liked it, Pann, you liked coming down on my big tits, didn't you?” Surprisingly, this manner of speech from the cheap porn was so organic that it didn't make him ugh, but only turned him on more, just as the white drops, some of which spilled over her firmly pressed breasts. “Do you want another one, hmm? Do you want it between my tits? Want some more, hmm?”

  He couldn't stand it, pulled her to him, kissed her tender neck, and then id her back on the same bed. Now, the traces of his past orgasm are already clearly visible on her monumental breasts, but not for long. The young man has already grabbed Shera's legs, pulling them up to her head, bending her almost in half, noting in passing her flexibility. He clenches her shins, beginning to enter her pussy with a measured and gradually accelerating rhythm, under the heavy breathing of Shera, who has fallen silent and does not seek to speak in the process, and who herself holds her legs, does not let herself fall out of the pose. The tantric hearth fres up to its full potential, gradually restoring strength to both, heavy breathing interrupted by moans and barely audible curses, with which the priestess meets her orgasm.

  This time Stepan deliberately speed up her climax, carefully bringing her to the peak, which made her cum so sharply, despite all her attempts to control herself. The young man thought it was a great joke to make her cum quickly, a little excuse to tease her in a way she didn't realize. She didn't realize, opening her eyes and mouth in surprise, and then exhaling hoarsely and freezing in a tense position, clutching her calves with the palms of her hands with all her might, almost to the point of bruising. Catching the rhythm, Stepan didn't stop, pouring himself and his spirit into his partner, not letting her body cool down. Little by little transferred the orgasm that had just subsided into a new one, forcing Shera to moan in her voice, her eyes bulging with panic as she cummed again, again suddenly for herself and without time to prepare.

  "Ha-ah-ah, what are you, uh-oh-oh, doing with me!!!!" Ecstasy overtook her, replenishing the reserve for both of them, pleasure came to him, clenching his consciousness in a tight grip, and he couldn't hold back either, cum pouring inside her pussy in a steady stream. "Oh-oh-oh you, you I gonna uh..."

  The technique, which combined standard charms and tantric practices, had put Shera into a trance with a particurly powerful and highly specific orgasm, but he wasn't going to use it, nor was he going to leave any sting traces. To be honest, it had come out of pure naiveté, born of a desire to try a new technique. Now, looking at the priestess who had rolled her eyes and opened her mouth resembling a sleeping or a growth doll, he realized that he had overdone it a bit. He gently unlocked their auras without giving her any orders, allowing her to wake up. The often-blinking priestess looked at him a little perplexed, then frowned her eyebrows and listened to herself, and then, finding nothing unusual - she would have found it, if he had purposely hidden his actions and had not given any orders - she let go of her legs and pressed herself against the tiredly breathing young man from the back, kissing his neck and the back of his head.

  “Tired, aren't you? If you want, I can do it myself, or let's bathe and continue, there's still time, isn't there?” The effect of the Sleepwalker that bewitched her id the desire not only to cum at least three times, but also to bring her partner to orgasm, but where the first was a prerequisite, the second occurred only at the will of the one who said the key phrase. “Or do you want me to suggest something completely vulgar?”

  Instead of answering, he pressed her tighter, hugging the four-times ecstatic lover, and breathed heavily. Unexpectedly, the spontaneous decision to disable the priestess's cognitive thinking with pure pleasure and specific effects on her aura and spirit had exhausted him, just without wasting his reserve. He gave his third orgasm entirely to her, allowing Shera to wipe his chest with a clean handkerchief first and then sit on top of him and leisurely ride him to another eruption. This time he couldn't, and didn't want to, bring her to the peak, allowing himself to rex and enjoy. The calm and surprisingly soft surge, the pressure of her lush hips pressing his pelvis into the bed, moving uninterrupted, not even rising, the tight grip of her wet and hot pussy, and finally the happy and satisfied smile on the priestess's face. Somehow it was a strong conviction that, if the beginning with the jerking of the breasts was removed, and their argument forgotten, the woman herself would gdly agree to repeat such a night.

  They parted at night when the sun had set and the nasty rain-snow began to drizzle outside. They washed themselves with hot water and said goodbye warmly until the next meeting. Stepan never realized at what moment the influence of the Sleepwalker ceased to work, but Shera was leaving him under no influence at all. He smirked slyly and said that the attempt to seduce her by methods devoid of magic was not considered a love charm, but if he succeeded, so be it. But he wouldn't, no way, no way. She waved goodbye to him, put on shoes cleaned with a couple of weak spirits of water and dirt, threw a warm cloak over her shoulders, and went to sleep in her bed.

  Stepan, exhausted beyond belief, looked a little at the status, at his honestly won “peaceful development III” and also passed out. He dreamed of races on huge, each the size of a good vilge house, wooden carts with bananas, each at least one and a half meters long, and instead of horses in the carriages were harnessed huge humanoid cucumber giants, all as one, with the faces of Nichos Cage screaming in inexpressible agony and suffering.

  * * *

  The next two days Stepan spent entirely on developing himself, noting the growing experience bar that measured the remaining path to the sixteenth level. The new upgrade of his meta-skill, which brought him to the allowed maximum, turned the routine pumping into a little less routine, the experience flowed with a noticeable acceleration, which made it morally easier to call. The new level beckoned new promotions, so Stepan didn't allow himself to be idle. In the sense that he did not allow even more carefully than usual. He tried to occupy himself with any useful work. The skill at level three, as promised by the System, not only significantly increased the increase in experience from peaceful activities, but also promised to simplify the acquisition of new knowledge and properties, if their acquisition was associated with the same peaceful activities. The guy liked this bonus for a meta-skill that had been completed to the end and immediately wanted to spend another ten talents in the meta-skills section, only that the talents should be free. Well, it's not harmful to dream, it's harmful to daydream.

  Filling the list of contracts with combat conscripts went smoothly and without major deviations from the pns. He deliberately avoided concentrating on any specific area, trying to get fighters from almost any direction. And he was answered. They came and listened to him, and made contracts with him: elements, of all kinds and forms, as well as a full range of exotic, sometimes very exotic influences. There was, for example, quite effective and rare, difficult to summon, but ready to work for an offering of ordinary energy, a spirit that worked only on those who stand on the color red or scarlet. Whether it was a pool of blood, a carpet in the pace, red sandstone, or a ray of light passing through scarlet gss - the effect would be possible. This spirit got into the victim's head and changed the left and right pces there. For the next minutes or hours even an experienced fighter will resemble a twitching paralytic. In return, he was given permanent, as opposed to the shift in perception, color blindness, and repcement of color perception in the brain. Either heal or spend the rest of your life with new filters in your head. Only very specific healers can heal it... or mentalists, but they just twist the perception again, not fix the defect in the brain.

  Not such a strong spirit, but due to its very specific sphere and nature, not every amulet and shield would be able to repel its blow, even those used by full-fledged mages. The other spirit was able to summon a heap of sharp steel spades from the ceiling, walls, and floor of any castle, fortress, or pace. But he could only come to the call and use his crowning trick if in that castle his true master was killed at least once, and the structure passed into the hands of the victor. Forcing it to attack just like that was also possible, but it would take a lot of effort, and the spirit would have every chance to die if it went against the forbidding nature impnted in its very essence. The third crap put a very powerful buff on anyone, allowing them to not be afraid of being hit by almost any bdes and in any quantity, even if they are enchanted with not-too-powerful magic. Only bdes forged from bronze and arbitrary alloys. Protection also didn't apply to crushing blows and was easily bypassed by a trivial blow of the hilt or garda in the teeth.

  He'd sent Sleepwalker to Shera immediately, the night after their second-to-st interaction in the bet. But now he simply hadn't had a chance to talk to her. The priestess was talking to the vilgers, walking around the vilge cemetery, and trying to beg her goddess to understand how they had gotten that ill-fated and toxic barrel in the first pce. It was no joke, someone had brought it for something, sealed with the city's coat of arms, and so it could be dangerous. She regretted that the two men who'd fished it out had both died from it, so the only way to find answers was through necromancy, which was forbidden to priestesses of the Life Giver by css jurisdiction. Judging by the reservations - and to be fair, she had told him, Kirik, and the vilge bcksmith Marog over a bowl of hot wine and honey while they were sitting in the inn - the man with the ink-stained hands had taken up the case, for it was his job. And she was just trying to get to the truth for herself and her soul.

  During that meeting, Stepan was tempted to say the key phrase. Especially since this time he made it less provocative than the second one, but he didn't risk it. And it was simply rude to interrupt a busy woman from her work, especially if her work was socially useful. And the fact that we are talking about brainwashing her smart brains does not change anything, since she agreed to everything and put herself on the line. He wasn't going to leave any lingering effects anyway, intending to be as honest as possible, and there would be more than one night ahead for a night of passion. And yes, the priestess had even tried to talk to the river, modifying the prayer for good fishing a bit, which she said would allow him to inspect and feel the bottom of the river a couple of leagues down, but not up. It ended with Shera shivering to the bone, and Stepan, at a request reyed through Melda, running in to help, bringing only a mixed strengthening potion and reaching out with a call to his best healing spirits.

  Everything ended with drinking the same wine with honey, retelling funny stories, and a funny anecdote from life from Marog, who told everyone how he once when he was still in his teens, wanted to prove to his father that he could smith grown-up things and, while he went to the fair, wasted a lot of ore in his attempts to forge a genuine knight's sword. After a conspiratorial pause, this short and not particurly rge, but very dense strong man, quickly ran to his house, returning a dozen minutes ter with the very bde.

  "That's what my father used to beat me with. He said that he hadn't killed me only because he couldn't hit me properly. I waste so much excellent ore." He expined while everyone who already knew the joke ughed, and Stepan and Shera were torn between the desire to ugh and punch his face with a facepalm or its local analog. "Now, this is it. It's my family heirloom, a treasure of the my family!

  The guy didn't make a knight's sword, at most it was not the worst club, only that its shape resembled the dick. It was obviously not a deliberately created effect, but a consequence of someone else's ineptitude and chance, but it looked quite amusing. And though the earthman was twisted deep inside by cringe at the sight of the bcksmith boasting of this truly Ogf sword, the humor of the situation did not escape him.

  “Well, in a worst case, with this weapon you can not only fight off a thug but also literally fuck him up.” The young man commented and his frankly bearded, ft, and stupid joke caused sincere homeric cackling even at Shera, and the shaman also listened to the spirits of the words, checking to make sure that they were sincere, but no, no sycophancy, just they were really funny, and they had never heard such wordpy before.

  The third night with Shera happened another twenty-four hours ter, when she, tired and exhausted in her worries, came to sit and chat, to drink a rexing and soothing potion. By the way, like Stepan himself, she did not hesitate to check her drink for any unnecessary additives, apparently believing that within the framework of their competition, the young man was ready to go for extremely dubious means. Naturally, she found nothing, nothing at all, because Stepan did not need to stoop to such trifles, he was pounding the priestess in the brain in a big way, using rge calibers.

  A casual phrase, a phrase that slipped easily into ordinary conversation, a slightly sleepy look in the eyes of a woman lost between dream and reality, and then came the time of passion. Hitherto he had not had the opportunity to enjoy so fully a woman's body at his first desire. The young man involuntarily admired the beauty of the priestess, enjoyed her body, her complete willingness to give herself at his command, and, of course, his power over her, which she could not even realize. Statham's quote about absolute power and depravity came into his head, but he kept it from him, more than he realized.

  The third episode of victory in the dispute was almost habitual: Shera, who received the command, smiled cheerfully, pulling off her clothes, without which he saw her almost more often than clothed, and then climbed on top of him and for a couple of hours she interspersed active riding on top and a softer, almost gentle, stay on top, but without active bouncing. Infinitely tired from the exhausting leveling, the young man consciously gave the leadership to his partner and only enjoyed the process, helping himself and the priestess through the connection of auras, forcing her to cum as often as he did. The evening ended with another demonstration of Kuordemar traditions, perfectly suited to the size of the priestess' bust and her extensive intimate skills.

  This time they lounged in the hot water barrel for some time. The st time without the distorted consciousness of the woman, who was joking with the guy looking at her about the fact that for the time being he, as, could not touch her, unless he wanted to automatically lose the bet. Well, unless it was to help rub her back, but watch his hands. In another situation, it would have been a really powerful tease and a serious test of composure, but for Stepan, who had just enjoyed her body so much, it only made her smile. He said goodbye warmly and without any negativity and handed her a long-awaited gift - a second set of heating stones to warm the water in the barrel. At that moment it seemed to him that if he pressed even a little more, if he showed even a little persistence, Shera herself would admit defeat in the dispute and give herself to him again, only at her own will. Judging by the way her emotions and aura were bursting with joy, the colors of the rainbow of the reflection of her spirit in the world of spheres, the gift was truly magnificent. And when he expined that the spirits themselves accumuted power and heat, that they did not need to be watered with blood and sacrificed to them, that it would be enough only once or twice a week to hold them in the fire, you can directly in the vilge oven, along with the cooking dinner ... He had to show a bit of typical male stupidity and inability to understand hints, so as not to win the argument immediately. And also to answer a couple of rather slippery questions, which reminded Stepan that Shera was an experienced priestess. She is loyal, first of all, to the Temple and the Giver of Life, so it was necessary not to overdo it.

  “Well, it's much easier for shamans to accomplish such tasks. If you have time and understanding, it's not hard to flood the market with cheap and simple amulets, it's hard to make them long-sting, but there are secrets to it.” He vaguely expined the obvious, expining how he had been so successful in making his lover quite decent and long-sting heating amulets for ablutions in the first pce. “I can't make them often, of course, it takes too long to find the right spirits and butter them, but there's nothing complicated about it. They will definitely st five years, and then you never know, maybe even a little longer, or even the next day spirit will leave the stone.”

  Here he was already lying, having made sure that the priestess did not turn on her prayer-polygraph... because the small spirits on the stones sprinkled with the blood and will of the shaman with the second rank of the sphere mark and proper fumigation of the stones with smoke from burned herbs and offerings would not st five years. Frankly speaking, he was sure that as long as these stones were not damaged, breaking into pieces, the spirits would continue to sit there and carry out the id down directive, warming water even to great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of Shera. He overdid it a little too much, and that's putting it mildly.

  "Thank you, Pann, you're an amazingly nice guy, but now I feel uncomfortable." The frowning lips did not deceive him, for Shera was pleased to the extreme, though a note of discomfort was present, as was a sense of embarrassment that she could not give in return. "I can't even bless you in Her name, miracles don't go down well with those who have already given up on them once, it can only get worse. Oh, look, if you want, let's discard our bet, without any hard feelings or punitive chicanery, shall we?

  It was a strong move on her part because she was sure she had the winnings in her pocket, but Stepan's hair and eyebrows nearly stood up as he sensed that his well-deserved meta-skills were floating away. He managed to slip off the subject, making their battle a matter of principle, saying that we sing an ode to our stubbornness, and also “said” accidentally that he would be sorry for the effort he had already spent. The priestess, who squinted her eyes, accepted this expnation and, looking at the heating stones presented to her, seemed to take her opponent a little more seriously. The opponent mentally wiped the sweat from his forehead, gd that he had not shown her the system of filling the barrel with clean water had been created in just a couple of days and many separate calls.

  A dozen water spirits in a small totem, which is pced at the bottom of the barrel, created a connection between the water in the shitty well of the te owner of his current home, literally teleporting this water, piping it through the spirit world, which was used instead of a water pipe. The liquid appeared completely clean in the barrel, because, in addition to the spirits of the water sphere, there were five specific spirits of purity (no, not racial) in the totem, which were engaged in this purification (not eugenic) regurly. Stepan thought that if Shera had admired this construction, she would have had so many more questions that he would have had to learn methods of memory wiping. Or dismembering the corpses of his mistresses and then drowning the remains in the river. No, he was born and raised in the wrong city for that.

  The priestess was gone, leaving behind only pleasant memories and no less pleasant nguor in his body, and the young man was thinking seriously and for a long time, even sleep was not coming. A new point of meta-skills had to be spent, there was no sense to keep it in reserve, but, damn his indecision, he was literally torn between two options. The first was the skill “improved material rewards”, which simply and without unnecessary intricacies increased the quality and quantity of gifts received even for small quests from the system. The ability to receive potions, reagents, amulets, artifacts, materials, or other items, receive them in much greater quantities than before. This is the way, that will significantly cut corners in the very issue of avaibility of necessary resources. Yes, such rewards are always random and depend on the type of task, but the system has not yet given or offered useless gifts. Well, unless you count the Autogoddess, for Milf of Milf, so far, with exactly the same one hundred percent stability has not offered a single normal material reward. Stability, you know, can be considered a sign of success!

  As opposed to improving rewards, the second avaible option was considered: “Access to system purchases”, which allowed him not to wait for a gift from the System, not to hope that the next assignment would fall in time and the reward would be exactly what is most cking now. Access to the system store, in fact, promised, according to the help, the ability to provide the necessary things for oneself, even if not for free. Exactly the same reference stated that the skill would only give access to purchases, but not unlimited: every completed assignment, every crumb of experience gained, every level taken or knowledge discovered without investing talents would fill another scale, which can then be spent on things that the isekai needs. The problem is that the purchases avaible to Stepan will be determined, among other things, by his actions and persistence in leveling, but, in theory, in this way, he can guarantee a stable and continuous practice. It's possible, but in the previous version rewards for completed quests will be much more valuable, even if they remain mostly random.

  Of course, one could simply divide this and two more future gift talent points between the two meta-skills, but logic and practice showed that each upgrade strengthens this skill more and more, so one “three” is much better than three “ones” or a couple of “twos”. Help these empirical observations only confirmed, and therefore Stepan agonized over the choice, just as realizing that then he can banal greed points to pump the missing. As a misfortune, the meta-skills were not pumped on their own, being raised either for talent points or as a reward for systemic assignments, and it was possible to train some “systemic evaluation” until hair loss due to the intensity of training - there would be no result.

  The young man couldn't afford long hours of indecision, at least because he wanted to sleep. And so, since both options were attractive to him in their own way and on the same scale, he solved this dilemma simply and manfully: he flipped a coin, shifting the responsibility to fate and luck. It didn't work, though, because as soon as he invested his not-so-free talent in “access to system purchases I”, it was as if the usual status had opened up a new additional menu, in which it was possible to poke around. Yes, the selection was good, almost all the reagents or materials that he cked to work in the fullest y-out. Six-year-olds smoke weed, picked at the flowering stage with all precautions and adherence to formution, for example. It wasn't cheap, but it was almost impossible to get it just by wandering through the forests unless you were extremely lucky to find the right clearing. He already had ideas on how to repce it with a few reagents simpler but strengthened by direct transmission to the world of spirits and his authority, but the opportunity to cut corners and save a week and a half of calls is also nice.

  Or pieces of volcanic gss, the most common, just cooled naturally, under the natural spring rain. In fact, it is a penny ingredient if you have active volcanoes and spring rains nearby. The very knowledge of how to use this penny reagent can also be considered a mystery, especially for the shaman who has never seen volcanoes in his life, if not on TV, and does not belong to one of the specific families of shamans, who lived near these volcanoes for generations and generations collecting knowledge and ways of working with volcanic spirits. The method of strengthening the invocations of fire spirits or magmatic entities, as well as strengthening their very presence in Reality and increasing their resistance to all kinds of methods of expulsion, will hardly be so superfluous. In the same way, samples of blood and bile of magical beasts, the spiraled organs of all sorts of creatures, including intelligent ones, bnks for totems, or ready-made houses of spirits with those very spirits - everything can be ordered and purchased. Although, of course, he personally thought it was a waste to buy ready-made contracts when he could summon and bind them himself and gain experience for it.

  As, there were no artifacts, totems, amulets, or imprisoned spirits among the ready-made artifacts, totems, amulets, or imprisoned spirits. Reagents worthy of the hand of a Magister or a Senior Shaman were avaible in homeopathic quantities. Yes, yes, exactly “as”, such a nightmare, no service ... The main thing is not to say it out loud in front of anyone. It was also impossible not to note that most of the “goods” that did not belong to the shamanic csses, as well as those branches of knowledge, with which Stepan increased the kinship, were much more expensive, and that's if they were present at all. This could be helped both by his own development and by skill upgrading, which would, according to the information, increase the assortment, reduce prices, and, no less importantly, increase the inflow of that thing that served as currency in this store. Yes, yes, at the moment the scale of filling the “essence of essence” was zero, that is, empty, while the upper bar of this scale did not seem to have even at the initial stage. Accumute as much as you can and then spend it. And, as usually happens with the system, there were no exact numbers. The consciousness simply perceived the price in the ratio of “little-many”, “enough-not enough”, “enough-not enough”, and so on.

  So he fell asleep in the middle of looking at the goods, and, importantly, this looking at the goods ate up the reserve a little. The information said that in the future, in order to get to the elite bargaining windows, one would have to pay for the right to look at the assortment. He barely had time to close that window before he was squeezed to the bottom during his nap. Of course, the system would most likely cut off the reserve pumping after the bckout, but what a moron one had to be not to insure oneself and save oneself from the obvious risk. Even in his extremely exhausted state, he had no intention of allowing such a stupid thing to happen, nor could he imagine allowing it. Sleep came as a welcome guest, sheltering the mentally and physically exhausted young man with its wings.

  SpoilerT.N. Well, it's a reference to the original. This story is an omak actually. The hero started to fill the amulet with power but fell asleep from exhaustion, and he almost died since the connection didn't cut off.

  [colpse]And he dreamed of those very, as yet inaccessible, elite windows of the system store, where for absolutely immense and incalcuble amounts of essence it was possible to buy a soaring fortress-city forty kilometers long and ten more high, covered with pure mithril armor with adamantium pting and enchanted to the st nail as if over each of those nails a full coven of archmages had been dancing ritual dances and sacrificing their own firstborns for fifty years. He dreamed of the contract stones that once and for all bound to the user battle harems of ninety-nine godly magicians and warriors with brains and even souls washed for loyalty to the grave and after it. He could see the staffs capable of blowing the Moon to pieces by pouring a hundredth of the reserve into one of the charms embedded in the structure of the artifact and then annihiting those pieces. Rings of omnipotence, crowns of almightiness, two simple iron daggers, the price of all of the above options combined, robes of absolute invisibility, the armor of complete invulnerability... It was a pleasant dream, even waking up was a pity, and it was even more pity to look at the empty reserves of purchasing power and weep bitterly with greed.

  * * *

  The first thing Stepan did in the morning - well, after washing up and doing the needful, for which experience was not given anyway - was to go to his favorite gde and further persistent and even a little bit obsessive development of himself. At some point he had to say to himself Stop, moron, you'll kill yourself this way!, stopping munchkinism and letting the reserve be replenished little by little between separate calls. Calling new healing spirits, which will have to take care of the purification of blood and tissues from poisons and toxins, because he did not forget about this direction, but put it on the second role, providing the opportunity to sense the poison in advance. Another fighting spirit of the natural type, causing a powerful blow on the area of the riot of intestinal microflora and thereby ensuring that all those who fall under his wrath, artillery throwing shit shells. A powerful curse, provided not even by the spirit directly, but by the way the summoned spirit slightly changed the properties and spiritual reflection of an ordinary copper coin, which, if something happens, you can pay with a dishonest merchant. Nothing fatal, but it would be hardly easier to remove such impotence than it would be to remove it after the Life-Giver's mild anger.

  Reworking of old contracts. Another agreement made with SpongeBob, as the Earthman called the curse eater, for another case, and with the same type of energy. The spirit-beast, the embodiment of the coral polyp, liked the st call - obviously, it was much more pleasant to eat such soft and pliable blessings than to eat toxic and still snapping curses - so in the second deal they even managed to push through a hefty discount, quite noticeable, in fact, almost without spending the reserve, limited only to offerings. In a pce of the shaman's power, it was becoming easier and easier to send this offering directly to the spirit world. In his company called another spirit, also of animal nature and also underwater: in the spiritual vision he looked zy and sad three-meter catfish, with sadly drooping mustache. The ability to breathe underwater and harmlessly eat all sorts of junk, this is undoubtedly very useful properties, but no less useful was his ability to scour the bottom of any river for twenty kilometers in any direction, looking for something that interests the shaman. Of course, this miracle could hardly find a small coin, but a shipwreck or a magically active artifact? Why not?

  The young man deliberately did not look at the new menu, so as not to see how fast the purchasing scale was growing, preferring to work quietly and quickly until the evening. In the evening, for the fourth time, he summoned Sleepwalker, having exchanged the necessary images with him, he exhaled, sat down on his cloak, and opened the system tab. It wasn't much, if you counted reagents or amulet bnks, for example, but it was still decent. And it turned out that he could exchange the system currency for gold or silver, both nuggets and magically active, which was valuable in rituals and artifacts, and in already cast coins of any state of his choice. Transted into Florens, one of which, it turned out, had been handed to him from the start, having settled in Truda's greedy hands, he could get seven full coins right now and still have enough fifty silver for change. For that kind of money, of course, he couldn't buy up all of Upper Lyady as a sve for life, but the vilge itself, with all the livestock, buildings, and wharf.... the hell he knows, Stepan's not so good with prices yet.

  Separately, he noted that the rate of conversion of the system currency into gold was, to put it mildly, robbery: having managed to price some reagents back in Fantrel, the young man clearly saw that for the avaible stocks he could buy up about a dozen and a half of these florens, or even more. On the other hand, wouldn't it matter? It would be enough for him to buy a couple of gold coins in silver in freemarks for a comfortable life. He chose his new skill solely to deal with material issues, not to specute on valuable metals. After studying this tab, and calcuting the prices of local currency in retion to each other he did not buy anything. He put it off for the next day when it could be immediately used. He returned to the house tired but satisfied, like a hikki who spent half a year without internet and now had gotten access to it.

  Studying the system and the help, which had already become as much a part of the routine as rinsing my mouth and teeth with a special potion, crified a couple more questions. The most important of which was the ck of understanding of the reason why the same meta-skill with a store and its “colleague”, increasing material rewards from assignments, did not appear immediately, but only recently, after the closure of the peaceful pumping. Obviously, some of the skills or knowledge were revealed to study not only with the proper number of characteristics but also when developing individual branches, without which not to open the next in the chain. And among the meta-skills there was a condition that had never been met before: the need to gain a certain number of points invested in meta-skills or gain a specified number of talents. Thus, only after the st quest point was invested "the acceleration development through a set of meta-skills" appeared. It gave not too significant, but a constant increase in experience for each of the talents invested in these very meta-skills. Even if it does nothing, the skill synergizes with its “fellow”, which brings experience in exchange for days lived! Improved help also began to hint mysteriously that even the most useless at first gnce meta-skills reveal themselves in the development, sometimes dramatically. I even wanted to take and, in spite of my pns, pump my system clock, just out of curiosity. Well, it was about the same desire as the idea of visiting a poor student to check out the restaurant next to the dormitory. You can, but only if you then start to lose weight by methods of intense prison hunger strikes. For really obvious reasons Stepan did not check his thoughts and quench his curiosity. Instead, he watched Shera sleeping peacefully, who had gone to bed early today and then fell asleep.

  In his dreams, he was met at once by Keanu Reeves in terminator armor. The old talking donkey told him that Stepan was the only one they'd been waiting for to raid the infernal domains for sves, trophies, and demonic concubines. Handing him three plungers as weapons, the handle of one of which was painted with white paint that had not yet dried, they ordered him to follow in the keel and knock out the targets illuminated by the donkey. In fact, that's what he did the rest of the night, waking up in a great mood and overflowing with adrenaline.

  The next day the priestess visited Stepan again, not in the evening, but in the afternoon, for the earthman had finished his calls much earlier than usual, having decided to take a rest. From the very morning, even before the sun had dawned, he went to the clearing, bought the desired reagents right on the spot, and right on the same spot conducted one of the hardest calls he had ever done. Picking over with his fingers a small bluish pebble, the size and shape of which resembled some kind of coin, in the recess of which, in the very center, there was a dirty and not faceted, but quite precious ruby, he smiled every now and then and made his satisfied face leaner. It was not so good, but it was not surprising - even if it was a one-time or rather five-fold contract, even if it was not the most useful one avaible, but it was powerful!

  The summoned spirit had a very flexible nature. It could attack, protect, and even heal, embodying the versatility of the water element, but its main power was to manipute weather conditions and create a torrential downpour. And, if in this infernal downpour to add even a drop of his blood, then this blood is already a hell to find unless the shaman does not want to. Very powerful invisibility and invisibility by standard spells. It is difficult to overcome even with strong magic, especially effective against blood mages and all sorts of vampires, but at the same time maintaining mobility, without the need to freeze in pce and so sit. A perfect means of escape and retreat from the superior forces of the enemy pursuing you. And no less ideal means to lure this enemy into an ambush, pull apart and force them to split up, and then kill them one by one, attacking at the most favorable moments and taking advantage of the advantage in sensorics. There is no rain, no darkness, no hindrance for the one who has summoned the spirit and let this spirit prompt the right movements, and each drop will outline a piece of the surrounding reality, creating an ideal tactical map in the brain.

  It's not to say that Stepan would run away from a superior enemy, and even less to say that he would kill that superior enemy in a fshy battle, but having insurance for emergencies and not having it were two big, big differences. Now he would have to get something like an emergency teleporter, maybe directly through the spirit world, which could take him away from a direct hit, but here he had to think and search: in his system catalog of knowledge such contacts were avaible, but every time not without reservations. That exclusively temporary terms of the deal, which must be updated every season, even if he did not use the insurance, then the too high risk of communicating with an extremely unpredictable spirit, then the probability of coming out not where he wanted, then the possibility of coming out not completely or in pieces, then the inability to specify the exact location of the evacuation. There are options, how not to be, but one has to think, one has to decide - what to sacrifice, and will it not be easier to learn how to walk with the body through the spiritual world? The spiritual transformation will undoubtedly contribute to such learning.

  Fatigue after the conclusion of an important contract didn't interfere with enjoying life... and Shera. Hearing the code phrase, the priestess let herself be put on her four this time, wiggling her ass, arching her back in ecstasy and frankly getting high from how easily she was cumming in the arms of her sweet Pann. As if to make up for their st time, when he had given all the action to his partner, the Earthman was pounding her even, perhaps somewhat roughly. He made sure she liked everything and ignited the passion from his hearth, so most of the time Shera was moaning, growling, ready to bite her dress, which she used to gag herself, just to turn down the volume. The young man, clutching her waist and thighs tightly, was accelerating more and more, not hurrying to reduce the heat, but trying this time to avoid overloading someone else's consciousness and forcibly putting the priestess into a submissive erotic trance.

  He was, of course, tempted to try his hand at those very spells now and then. He could consider himself a full-fledged master. But he restrained such desires. First of all, there was a small risk of leaving traces, if someone competent happened to check the priestess in full, so to speak, from the tips of her hair to her toes. Secondly, it would be a step towards the Autogoddess's jokes. He had already made a concession to her for the sake of power. It gonna be enough for her. Thirdly, he would have agreed to conduct such experiments on Truda or a woman personally unpleasant and hostile to him, and even then, hardly. With a priestess, from whom Stepan saw only good things, he would not conduct risky maniputions that could harm him in case of a mistake, even if he had another system assignment. At least he knew for sure that his work would leave no traces and do no harm.

  The st cum of the night poured out onto the back of the fully undressed woman, who rexed sharply and almost fell face to the floor, so he had to hold her down. After stroking the heavy-breathing beauty through her blonde hair and turning her over on her back so that he could lick a little of her attractive breasts, he exhaled. No, no matter what anyone said, it wouldn't take days to get bored of this kind of spending time. The magical gift that spurred regeneration, and the tantric hearth that multiplied it, made it possible to be as enduring as possible, adding to the benefits of youth.

  This time they exchanged almost no words during the conversation. The priestess, who came to exchange a few words and eat in pleasant company, who also understood what she was talking about, and not obsequiously gave in, kissed the young man, tenderly and fully, stealing his breath for a long time, and then, having refreshed his body and washed his delicate skin, went on with her work. The harvest was coming to an end in the vilge, very abundant. The best in recent years, so that the mood of the vilgers, who had time to harvest even those plots whose owners had died, was on the rise. Against this background, the priestess working on the preparation of an important prayer service only multiplied the already very good prospects for the next years. Stepan thought that if Kirik didn't make a mistake and didn't get cut off halfway through the journey, the vilge would have every chance to grow rich in the coming years, maybe even expand.

  Shera, who had left on business, again hinted that she was ready to cancel the bet, and Stepan again pretended to be a dumbass who didn't understand the hints. He spent the rest of the day, immediately after receiving “access to system purchases II”, in meditations and maniputions of the spiritual body, dragging water from the well through the spirit world, or somehow pying with various matters that had been in the space of spheres and returned back. In the final stage, he even managed to pull off this trick with a chair, a heavy, wooden, and hard-built chair, bringing it back and nearly fainting from the overload and waste of reserve. Actually, he did faint briefly, the clock showed a few minutes had passed, but he'd gotten what he wanted.... He wishes he knew why he was doing that shit, but that's another question. The furniture piece after such a voyage, had lost every single seam between the parts, so the chair now seemed to be carved entirely from one solid piece of wood. The wood pattern on the visible surfaces became brighter and changed its color scheme and picture so in some pces, it seemed as if the chair was looking at him with its face, sad and understanding everything in the world.

  Stepan decided to go to the inn for a meal if he felt as if the chairs were about to talk to him. There was a full house at the local tavern today. After all, the harvest was almost over and preparations for the trip to the fair were in full swing. Not to mention the fact that this year the vilge was left without any tax levies unless you count the bare minimum! True, if the tax collectors showed up right away, it would be very difficult to prove to them that this vilge had been in bad trouble recently and that they should be pitied because there was not enough room in the barns to put all the loot. But, apparently, the locals themselves knew very well when legalized bloodsuckers-uppers in the service of the lord came to them, so they were not afraid of their visit.

  “It's all still light, honorable. It's still just the first grass.” The headman said to him, a little tipsy and wiping his sweat now and then. “The most important thing is to sell out well when the trades come. This year we don't have them here, we'll have to bring them to Brown Mill. It's too far. The dangerous people it's okay. They won't go after rge crowds of vilge men, here everyone will take an axe with him. But I'm still worried, you know, uneasy. We've invested everything this year, we've bet on the harvest, now we just need to close this business and that's it, success.”

  It was getting really hot in the inn. It was maddeningly hot, because the pce was unusually crowded, which made Stepan immediately regret his decision to go out in public. Introverts like him should start such things gradually, say, with a couple of exchanges of cssic “hello and goodbye”, and not immediately into the thick of things. And even though he immediately found a pce for him, and all respect was expressed, he still felt very awkward. No less awkward than before the unconcealed hints from a couple of local girls on and after it. However, they were far away from Shera. Also, Stepan could understand without his magic intuition, they did not pn to have fun sex without obligations and for mutual pleasure, which helped him to pretend that he didn't see or understand anything.

  The fun went on well past midnight, and it was only after that midnight that Stepan managed to carefully slip out and go off on his own. The impression was that every damn vilger wanted to get him drunk for saving his husband, brother, matchmaker, brother-in-w, brother-in-w, dog, neighbor, wife, daughter, daughter-in-w... Another man, barely holding back tears, thanked for saving his precious mother-in-w's life. He thanked him with such emotions that Stepan made a note to check his aura for spontaneous curses, because of course the man had no gift, but sincere and pure emotions, multiplied by a drop of spirit that every living creature has, created a cocktail that sometimes allowed to realize unconscious, but quite effective effects.

  The night street greeted him calmly and quietly, even the dogs hadn't growled at the young man who had magically appropriated the nd. Yes, his clearing was far from the vilge, but the boost from it, the acceleration of recovery, and other bonuses that could be taken without excessive fusion with the territory could be felt even here. Territorial magic, even at a basic level of mastery, allowed him to expand his capabilities and connections, so he wasn't afraid of a sudden attack from a forest or domestic beast, nor was he afraid of vilgers who decided to knock him on the head for the purpose of robbery. Why should he be afraid of them, if he never took off his protective amulets, and they were now more than a feather and a wind spirit? No one had ever tried to hit him on the head, so all he could do was go home and go to bed.

  He dismissed the idea of wrapping up in Shera's cabin and having her at the new pce. Because he hadn't had time to use one more of the Sleepwalker's summons. No way. He'd take the fifth rank ter, probably as early as tomorrow. The second rank of the store really opened up a lot of new options, including those not directly or indirectly reted to shamanism, and also increased the flow of resource-buying, and the prices went down. He even ordered two hundred silver for himself just in case and put it in his wallet, solving the issue of food and household needs for a long time. Sleep did not come for quite some time that night, interspersed with drowsiness and blurred images of something strange and incomprehensible. For a moment he even thought he saw some other pce, some other people and non-humans, among whom there was definitely a long-eared and graceful elf, her palm pressed to her face in a gesture of despair at the stupidity of others, but it was not certain.

  He woke up exhausted, with a slight headache and a firm conviction that even with the ability to negate any, even the most severe intoxication, one should not forget, if not the hangover, then the ck of sleep. Fatigue didn't prevent him from doing a quick exercise, energizing certain parts of his aura, bringing back his vigor, wiping himself with cold water, and getting ready to go out for a grinding session. He barely had time to complete the st one before he was interrupted by another system assignment. Well, at least it was not from the Autogoddess, but the most ordinary one, and not even a tiny, but a small one. Work with animal spirits. He needs to look through the eyes of birds or wild animals, as well as permanently pnt in these animals' animal essences, and necessarily the same totem direction. It is better not to put a wolf in a sheep, but it is clear without the terms of the task, at about the same level as the unwillingness to sit naked ass on hot coals.

  He accepted the assignment, finding it quite manageable. The more so because even in the almost winter forest there were still plenty of birds, and he had been able to lure the beasts before. He didn't even have to get too close, just enough willpower to appeal to one of the totems of the central circuit, the one that was tied to the animal sphere and controlled the animal spirits. By the time he arrived at the clearing, there were already chirping and whistling a couple of jays hopping on the altar, where the remains of grain after the offering were still visible, a lone whistler and a perplexed-looking at this all popery. Having nodded to himself, having estimated the front of work and rubbed his hands in anticipation, the young man once again looked at the assignment, which promised a quarter of the remaining level scale, an increase of affinity with animal spheres, as well as a dozen inky-bck feathers of a raven, which at least ten years lived at the magic source and gave these feathers voluntarily, not together with his life. Not to say that directly super-valuable reagent, but houses-dwelling for spirits of dark and air orientations of these feathers will come out very comfortable and nourishing the inhabitant, just that short-lived, six months to a year and all, change the hut.

  He took up the task with enthusiasm, but carefully. He didn't want to maim or kill the birds, so he strictly dosed his strength, summoned the spirits one by one, and peppered them with the necessary images for a long time, settling them into the bodies step by step and with pauses, helping them from his side. If there were difficulties and subsequent injuries to the aura due to inconsistency of certain parts of the spiritual body, Stepan immediately corrected them, calling in advance four specific healers, which could be called veterinarians-ornithologists, only in a spiritual way. The spirits, themselves having the features of ghostly birds, led by a ghostly entity in the form of a tropical toucan with a beak the size of Stepan's elbow, coped perfectly, so the shaman with his medical knowledge did not have to intervene at all.

  The spirits who received a new dwelling, and received it voluntarily, coming into harmony with the minds and essences of living birds, just as calmly concluded a contract, let them look with their eyes, and for free, and also agreed to look after the territory around the clearing and the vilge, even when the shaman himself will leave this pce. And why not look, at the same time moving closer to this very clearing, if here they have a flow of power, and the flow approved by the owner of the totem group and therefore as easily assimited by the birds? Yes, if they were wolves and not birds, then after two-three years, after the wolves would be infused with power and developed their spirit and flesh at the same time, and if Stepan had not entangled the beasts with prohibitions.... well, one would either have to “call the witcher”, or relocate, or go into the forest only in groups and with weapons, as in war.

  It's nothing. Well, birds, well they fly. Well a little bigger, faster, and smarter than usual. Well, they will be able, in time, to avert gazes from themselves or affect perception with their chirping... Yes, it will be necessary to forbid them from luring people into the forest and causing other harm, it will be necessary. So to speak, a responsible attitude to the surrounding territory. He also thought about binding such a peculiar shamanic surname to himself forever, but after thinking about it, he refused. From the usual and not too usual bird is not much use to him, even scouting he is already used to at the expense of the spirits, and to bind himself even more tightly, literally to be reted to the familiars, and even with the whole totem spirit of a certain animal .... No, too radical a solution, strengthening some areas, but inevitably hampering some others. The same power over the totemic beasts of the “native” spirit gives this totem, the very embodiment of a certain beast, read, godlike spirit, a certain power over you. Do without totemization of one's essence? Even without it, the familiar makes the shaman or mage vulnerable to some extent. He, here, has a whole collection of methods of casting spells through the surname in his head, so whyn't someone else finds something simir?

  He finished the assignment even earlier in the evening. The sun was just beginning to sink, but the reserve was already showing the bottom, and he had to call quite actively, no less actively restoring himself at the expense of replenishment from the gde. Rather, even slowing down this feeding a little, so as not to overload the aura and not to reduce the natural rate of replenishment, the necessary techniques were provided to Stepan in the knowledge base on manipution of magical sources. It also listed the excessively dangerous consequences of excessive and unnecessary fascination with this kind of replenishment. He still had enough strength for the fifth and final call of the Sleepwalker, as Stepan sincerely hoped. The exchange of images was not even frightening or stressful. Stepan waved to the birds that were watching attentively, and the birds chirped something friendly after him, and then he went back to the house, to the hot dinner, and to Meld, who was bouncing in delight. The reason for his excitement was that he had caught a magic crucian carp in the river today. Literally, it had scales like an iridescent film.

  “You can't eat them, honorable, you'll get a stomachache. You can't even sell them to the magicians, they don't appreciate them. They say it's not worth their time.” Judging by the fact that the boy didn't even offer Stepan to buy the fish back, he either told the truth or sincerely believed in it. “But if you release it back into the river and make a wish, it will come true. It's like the rainbow, only everyone sees the rainbow, but you're the only one with fish, here! And all the magic power is yours alone. It'll work, won't it, Mr. Pann, will it work?"

  The young man rolled his eyes and shook his head, trying not to damage his head with the facepalm. He seemed to have expined something. He taught him something, and even done it quite successfully since he had been rewarded by the System, but it didn't work to rid the “student” of his naive childish belief in omens, and it seemed useless to even try. Well, such is the vilge nature that they have in their heads an organic combination of the commandments of the Giver of Life, sermons of Sun preachers sometimes sounding even in this wilderness, old beliefs from local folklore, and all sorts of omens, which they believe despite everything. Stepan didn't bother to prove to the boy the absurdity of his question: even if it wasn't the most peaceful religion on Earth, for a word against which they could cut off your head. Why organize a theological debate with an individual who would consider the word “theology” a dirty word?

  “It's one to one, Meld, one to one: it'll either come true or won't.” The localized joke about the probability of meeting a dinosaur in the street was wasted because the boy seemed to have just received confirmation of his belief in miracles and was now smiling three times brighter. “You'd better tell me again, dummy, how you're going to defend yourself and your home from the evil spirit of, say, a dark stone sphere with aspects of interlocking walls. Only first tell me how you would determine its influence.”

  The guy biting his lip closed his eyes and strained as if he was constipated for the third day, starting to curl his fingers and count something in his mind. Not because the essence of the problem was mathematics, but simply because he remembered the blocks of information under numbers so that it was easier to remember. Strange as it may seem, the trick Stepan used at school helped him here too. Having counted and understood something, Meld smiled again and began to answer, almost bouncing on the spot.

  “If! If dreams torture you with nightmares, and in a nightmare, you feel as if you were buried alive in the ground, and then pressed down with all your might and you can't move! If the candles and mps burn out too quickly and often go out! If, if, if. Oh, if you can smell a dusty crumb in your porridge or bread left out overnight, here. Then it is the spirit of the firmament and darkness, and he is also the spirit of walls and ceilings, in them, his power is hidden. And it is necessary to check everything and spend the night with the whole family at the neighbor's house. And leave a chicken in the house, alive, but, this, cut, so that there was blood. If there's dust on the blood from above in the morning, it's definitely it. Sprinkle salt under the walls, just a little bit, but it must be a continuous line! Under the ceiling strong alcohol with honey smeared with a paintbrush, also continuous. Open all the windows at night and day, wash all the undry, and keep it under the sun. If dreams have disappeared and breathing is easy in the house, then that's it, the evil eссence is gone.”

  "First of all, it's not eссence, it's essence....." Meld, dulled by the first remark, smiled so slyly in response to the second comment that Stepan immediately realized that the reservation was not accidental. "Secondly, it is correct to speak continuously, that is, constantly and without pauses. You will repeat it thirty times, and yes, you will count it yourself too. You will lose your way once and do it all over again. Thirdly... well, right, in principle. You forgot about sincere prayer and the smoke of wormwood too, but it's right. And if the food would not be dusty, but just spoiled quickly, bloomed with mold, and rotten in the evening and night?

  Diction and vocabury, as well as the ability to count and multiply, he also began to teach. Not out of a desire to make the guy an educated person and not out of an intention to take him on as a real apprentice, but out of a slight intention to get, maybe, a new level of pedagogical knowledge, just for the sake of it. What if he found a talent or a meta-skill that would give him bonuses depending on the number of talents he had acquired in general?

  “Well, that's wormwood, if I'm mistaken with the spirit, it may make me angry, you said, so I don't want anything to happen. And I don't know much about prayers, and my uncle didn't teach them, he spared these gifts to the novices of the Fertile One.” The boy found an excuse for himself, though this time his excuse was at least correct, even if the spirits of words indicated that he had forgotten about the first and the second, but, rightly so, sometimes the ability to expin why you didn't do something, and why it should be so, was much more important than academic knowledge and tenacious memory. “And if there's mold and rot, that's the spirit of as-pec-t withering, but you have to think for the sphere. Only the sense, well, no, there is almost always enough to let more light into the house and stove with motherwort and dry flower, well, thrown into the fmes. And if it doesn't help, you'll have to call a magician or a priest, you can't manage on your own. Here!”

  After torturing the poor man a little more for diction and reprimand, as well as getting from him the correct number of repetitions of the previously incorrect word, Stepan sent Meld away, and in about fifteen minutes he met a tired but satisfied Shera. The priestess only mumbled something, gnawing her teeth into a quarter of still warm and tender bread, and handed him another, also warm and tender. Judging by the hungry look in her eyes, either she had to fast for the ritual or she was so busy that she had no time to eat. She's pushing herself. So stomach ulcers or chronic gastritis can be obtained, even if the first and the second her goddess help to cure. Who knows, she may have helped a couple of times, if such a schedule is taken for granted for a priestess? He would have helped her somehow, but she could fix her own health, not much worse than a spirit sent to her, and it would be suspicious if that spirit was sent. And the young man couldn't help her in her work anyway, because her skills were very specific.

  “Phew, done, the hardest part is over, all that's left is the main prayer and, if She answers, picking up the bond of indebtedness with the seal from the headman.” The yawning woman smiled heartily, eating her porridge with chicken breast and fried onions with another piece of sweet loaf. “Still, he's a resourceful man, and resourceful in a smart way, not as usual. Everyone should be like that, instead of trying to shove every copper under the floor. Reminds me of the halfling, to tell the truth. They also think money should make money, not lie in the celr. What about you, Pann, have you changed your mind? I'll make another offer, don't be a fool, boy. I'm ashamed to let you, who've done so much for me, lose. Or do you want to, hmm?”

  She asked the st question provocatively and even with a slight hope, that she had met a soul mate who shared her fetish and was ready to take an active part in it. Stepan again made an unreadable face, swearing at the priestess, who had suddenly awakened her conscience and was ashamed of the fact that she considered herself the winner. How could she get into so much trouble just by being, well, good? So instead of a long argument, at the same time silencing his sudden conscience, he just shakes his head, refusing the proposal, and instead of a new round of debate asks:

  "Listen, Shera, what color are the nipples on your tits?" The key phrase immediately changes the woman's mood, making her interrupt her phrase, smile a little sleepily, and, opening her eyes, grin no longer sleepily, but lustfully.

  "Like you haven't seen and groped them properly, Pann?" Uncing the colr of her dress, she plops her girls down on the table and starts twisting and rubbing those very nipples, eye-to-eye with a cheeky yet confident look. "Pink, of course, what else would they be, dearie? Do you want to experience isnd traditions again, hmm? You want to get between the tits of the good priestess, hmm? Nod if you don't have the words, I'll give you a milk hug right away, Pann, don't be shy."

  He didn't think he'd be embarrassed, he was used to it, so he let himself sit on the bed while Shera jerked his cock between her breasts again, chuckling and saying another funny phrase now and then. For a moment it was too much for him to hold back, and he came straight down on her just-in-time breasts, flooding them with white flow. This time she didn't squeeze him in the hollow to the very end, she let herself be painted all over, and then, having only slightly rubbed off the seed, not even thinking to taste it, as in earthly movies for grown-up children, she quickly turned up her ass. Perhaps it was from the back that Stepan found it most pleasurable, although the horsewoman's position was more than competitive, but now he wanted to be active, not only to enjoy it.

  The sounds of bodies spping against each other filled the room, the moans, and heavy breathing seeming like thunder in the near silence. They didn't speak to each other, and Shera herself was silent, only thrusting harder and harder and almost growling at the moments of orgasm. The Earthman, still successfully using his skills in tantric practices, was bringing her from peak to peak. He was tempted to go further, to use something more serious than just the clutch and resonance of auras, to get a chance to develop his knowledge to a new level, but he didn't want to risk his partner's health or, more importantly, to turn a pleasant evening in the company of a sexy beauty into another training session. In a sexual sense he could afford to rest, but not to work out? Can he?

  Several times they changed positions, but one way or another Stepan was always behind her, either ying the priestess on the bed, belly down, with her juicy buttocks only slightly upward for his comfort, or putting her on her knees, tearing her down doggy-style, or forcing her to put her hands against the wall and stick her ass out harder. He did not allow himself to be rude and spanking, remembering well that the state of a woman treated by the Sleepwalker did not make her submissive and ready for anything. She wants and finds any justification for her intention to give herself to Pann, or to take him, but she will not do anything too much against her principles and desires in bed. And for a sp on the ass, she could sp him in the face, which the young man did not want, no matter how broad his views and preferences were.

  They finished at the same time, violently and moaning, and afterward, embracing and joking about who had cum first, they walked to the water barrel, where they cuddled a little more, and Shera even helped him get rid of the remnants of passion with her strong priestly palm. After walking her to the door and receiving a passionate kiss from a sane priestess, he returned to the house and began to choose where to spend the st of his five free meta-talents. He didn't take the st hint he'd gotten today that he'd give up the argument and sleep together for fun. Maybe it was stupidity, probably it was, but perfectionism pyed a big part.

  “The most frustrating thing is if it turns out to be a waste.” He said, pacing the pce, clenching his fists nervously and shrugging his shoulders just as nervously. “She can do it. It'll be in her repertoire...”

  If the Autogoddess, in her milf grace, gave him something as useful as the summon of Sleepwalker, but from meta-skills, he would seriously consider going into religion. If Kirik is to be believed, then the same Sun-worshiper are recruiting flocks wherever they can, wherever they can, and even where it's strictly forbidden. If he said that he too had spent half his life glorifying the sun and killing all kinds of undead, and in Anor Londo, he burned with napalm, he would be welcomed with shouts of “brother”. Forcibly interrupting another batch of delusional thoughts and images, he sat down on the bed and began to invest the st of his talents. He wanted to invest at least one unit in improving the rewards for quests, but since the coin had spoken, he had to finish the job. Thus, the meta-skill “access to system purchases III” took its pce in Stepan's Status.

  It took a bit longer than he had expected to inspect the changes, because reaching the third rank again brought a qualitative change, just as it had done with the assignments when they had been raised to three. First, the inflow of currency for purchases increased even more, and the assortment of goods expanded. He had not looked in the “special” section of the Autogoddess before, and now he didn't want to, the prices decreased. Really rare artifacts and amulets also became avaible, though their prices were still so high that they made him cry. But the possibility, albeit theoretical, to acquire a staff worthy of a novice Magister of Magic or a protective amulet equal grade... well, it was inspiring.

  In addition to the obvious and listed, there was a so-called “offer of the week”, updated once a week if you didn't buy it and once every three days if you did. There, in this offer, something really valuable was offered for purchase, be it a reagent, an artifact, or a potion of some kind, but at a very rge discount. So much so that the same purchase, but through the regur menu, will cost several times or even literally by orders of magnitude more expensive if it is even in the general list of purchases provided. In principle, it's not a bad idea, especially if you always keep a reserve of purchasing power for just such a case. But the first item that the special offers window showed him was from Miss Milf's pantry, there was no doubt about it.

  Snow-white stockings made of unknown material, or rather, on earth unknown, and the system called it an etheric thread woven into the fabric, not only could create around the wearer's body (regardless of gender) a protective field of very impressive power, neutralize even very complex and cunning poisons, absorb powerful curses, as well as create a “wave of purity”, which is comparable to a powerful mass blessing and healing in an area of ten meters radius at once. No, in addition to the above, this piece of closet also allowed one touch on the bare skin of anyone but the wearer, to cause a fsh of passion, from mild excitement to reflexive and uncontrolble orgasm and gradually increasing trance state of complete submission, frankness and docility, with the ability to manipute the memory of the victim, so that to clean up the memories will not be difficult. The picture was completed by the fact that even with extremely careful scanning, this item looked like ordinary stockings made of spider silk, enchanted for strength, cleanliness, comfort, and pleasant smell, but no more.

  Ah yes! Another important thing was the repeated note that these stockings can be worn by a male. There was no binding to the gender. Rolling his eyes in a mute mat Stepan pretended that he had never read this system tab and in general, he imagined everything. All the same, in a week's time he would have made this purchase.... No, in principle, he might be able to save up for it but fuck it anyway, just from here and fuck it, without further thought. He doesn't need such shit himself, and he won't be able to sell such a toy, which corresponded to the magisterial bar, and not the initial one. And even if he could, he would still burn with shame right on the spot, damn! And who would he sell it to? To come to the nearest elven magician, you can noble blood, and immediately say: Do you need such a product? Don't be shy, I, with my supplier, have such products regurly, please contact me. He wonders if they will kill him on the spot or take away his super stockings first.

  All night long he dreamed of combat spy agentess dressed in stockings, chasing him with huge dildos shining with a scarlet light, fighting with them in the style of the unforgettable Star Wars, and screaming that they would carry out order sixty-nine at any cost, and he won’t be able to stop them.

  * * *

  The long deliberation again ended in nothing, and Stepan decided to leave the fate of the final stage of his assignment to luck and fate. No, this time he did not flip a coin, having done both simpler and more complicated things. He just decided to cast a spell on Shera, but it was as strong and insidious as a weak shaman, whose specialty was not love spells but healing. Would the spirit, pumped up with power and a couple of weak blessings of the strengthening type be able to reach the priestess and break through her defenses? Well, then so be it, so fuck perfect execution. If he couldn't, or if the priestess did notice the influence - and it was hard not to if you took your mind off it and assessed your own condition, even if you didn't want to - then it was his destiny to practice breaking the curse of repentance from the Life-Giver.

  He'd sent the spirit on the penultimate night before the full moon, just as Shera had finally rexed and seemed determined not to wound Pann's pride, who was gring with bck eyes and searching with all his might for a way through her defenses. In fact, the bck eyes were from a couple of simultaneous projects he'd been working on after he'd “won” all five talents and gotten access to the right reagents. If he had spent a little less effort on preparation and reinsurance if he hadn't been scattered between several goals, he would have already taken the sixteenth level. But the priestess didn't know that, and probably decided to let him lose with honor since he didn't even accept the direct offer to share a bed and discard a bet. Stepan couldn't say for sure whether she was offended, but something of that nature slipped through, though the priestess herself treated his resentment and stubbornness with condescending patronage. He's just a kid, he'll get over it.

  In the time before the end of the bet, which was no longer spent on summoning the Veyatel and regur lovemaking with the amorous priestess, the young man had managed to do a lot of things, replenish his collection of summons, negotiate with another powerful spirit of the combat type, secured several ways of invisibility, and destroyed a very brazen spirit of dark orientation. A particurly powerful leech with the ability to eat chunks of aura from the enemy in his knowledge was beled as an extremely willful and dangerous creature, which must be shown strength, and even then, may not help. But it was able to strike at the level of full-fledged battle charms in the performance of a master of magic with a bias in malefic. The leech had struck him when he refused to pay her for the three living ones that lived on the nd around his clearing. He refused quite politely, though without sycophancy, but politeness, even minimal, was taken for weakness.

  The defense held. The totems were not even damaged, only one and a half protective circuits burned out when the creature rushed forward, aiming for the shaman's face. Well, if he wasn't completely sure of his absolute superiority and perfect safety, he wouldn't have summoned this horror created by the higher spheres. A counter-strike with a couple of influences on the spiritual pne, - a kind of call, only with the purpose of hitting the spirit and causing it pain, a specific branch of skills of shamans and summoners, - followed by an attack of a couple of watchful spirits, which painfully bit the leech that lost its pressure and immediately fled, and then the attack with a spiritual grip. The third hand took the form of a crab cw with a bunch of spikes, literally tearing the spirit to shreds, although not with the first blow. In a fair fight, this battle would have been a much more dangerous adventure, but Stepan did not call the spirit to a fair fight, but to work, which he brazenly refused. Stepan would have let him go, leaving him a deposit for his trouble, but the spirit misjudged the shaman's aura and strength. He was good and powerful with knowledge, but he cked characteristics, and it would be worth thinking about ways to increase them in the most correct way possible, so as not to ruin his carefully cherished versatility.

  He got a lot of experience for the fight with the leech. Thanks to it he was almost moving to the next step, which was only two or three days of effective training in the previous mode, and that was if he didn't rush the horses, but gave himself a rest. Well, or finish the work on preparation for the first exit from the body and try to wander through the world of spirits in earnest, you can find two levels there, if you take it seriously. But that would be ter, when this stupid epic with the assignment from the Autogoddess, which he had agreed to for some reason, was over. Oh yes, that's right, he had agreed to it for the meta-skills, the main thing was to remind himself more often.

  Against the backdrop of that battle, a tiny assignment completed in passing went unnoticed, especially since small assignments were no longer given experience at all. Working with the spirits of metal, which needed to strengthen and reinforce at least a dozen iron products, did not cause much difficulty. The most difficult thing was to find a dozen items of iron - his knife as well as nails and horseshoes in the local Lefty's bcksmith shop. No, seriously, the bcksmith in Upper Lyady is indeed left-handed, Stepan had crified that separately, albeit in passing, Marog himself had told him in that conversation at the inn table. The funny thing was that he hadn't spoken to the bcksmith on the subject nor had he asked him to come to his inner sanctum. He had no doubt they would have let him in, but he still hadn't asked, taking advantage of the remote control of the spirits by simply channeling them by ordering them from his own home. Even if the bcksmith noticed that some of his goods, including horseshoes, were somehow trivially stronger and of higher quality for the same ore characteristics, he would write it off as a random fluctuation.

  SpoilerT.N. Well, Lefty it's the name for a skillful craftsman, usually a bcksmith.

  [colpse]As a reward for the fact that his spirits had directly distorted the spiritual reflection of the bullshit iron, making it better than it was in reality, Stepan received a small ingot of nugget gold, saturated with magic and lying on an earth-type magical source, and another nugget, bigger, but no longer gold. Some kind of local metal, perhaps having an analog on earth, but Stepan didn't know enough about geology. The main thing was that this thing was very noticeably magnetic, and also had some magical properties, so it was used by artifactors as an insuting element. This nugget was even more suitable than the gold nugget as an offering to some rather specific and extremely deep-dwelling spirits, who couldn't be reached without such a medium.

  He was so pleased that he almost bragged to Shera, but he bit his tongue in time, and she, judging by his smile, thought that the cunning boy had almost prepared his insidious and long-awaited blow. She generally continued to communicate with him nicely and cheerfully, often allowing him to learn something new about the world around him, but no longer touching the subject of the bet. For this, he was very grateful to her, as well as for the way she unobtrusively and unobtrusively pulled up knowledge about the world, which a native of a remote farm could not get purely physically. For this, he would have been even more grateful than for the silence about the bet, because he could calmly assimite the well-known, even if a little biased in favor of the temple of Gaia, but very valuable information, without shying away from asking stupid questions and being called a stupid hillbilly. It made him want to give up both the bet and the coolest part of the reward. Especially since the priestess had repeatedly given him a chance to do it without losing his dignity, but sometimes Stepan was so damn stubborn, and mostly to his own detriment.

  The spirit sent to the most beautiful woman, from whom Stepan saw only kindness, was in essence very close to the spirits of healers, but still used mainly by specialists in spells. Crude, stupid, and too straightforward against the background of all that the Earthman had already been able to show, it seemed to him inferior and without the slightest chance of success. Although in fact, given the analyzed properties of Shera's divine protection, he had about a sixty-forty chance, even if not in his favor. He sat down in a meditation pose on his bed, sending a spirit to the target, directing it personally, and looking at the sleeping priestess through another spirit.

  If the Sleepwalker's action was not traceable in the aura or outwardly, the spirit sent on a great mission could not boast such an imperceptible influence. The sleeping priestess began to toss and turn, breathing heavily, her body covered with drops of sweat, her hands, even in her sleep, reached for her tits, her pelvis began to wiggle reflexively at her invisible partner, her mouth opened in an almost orgasmic moan.... and then she woke up. Like a somnambu, she got up, threw her cloak over her nightgown, and without even putting on her shoes went where the image of that sweet and passionate boy named Pann was calling her. She would probably have come to him, half delirious with passion and with the vacant, almost animalistic stare of a cat in heat, but then the corner of the chair came into firm contact with the bone in her foot. Well, at least it was not a little finger, otherwise Stepan would not have forgiven himself such a betrayal.

  The priestess, bent over with sharp pain and silently cursing, wiped away her sweat and was about to go on her way, even touching the front door, but then she realized that she, almost naked, hot, literally flowing with lust, had woken up in the middle of the night with a clear and very compulsive desire to go to Pann and let him fuck her, fuck doggy style, fuck her lying down, fuck her on top, fuck her in any way he wanted, but fuck her. She clenched her teeth and whispered something that the spirit conveyed in the form of words: “You little, sly, conniving asshole, you almost got me!” and then she sat down on the floor in a prayer position and glowed a soft gold. The spirit watcher, immediately rose higher, avoiding the divine blow, and the spirit that sucked on Shera's aura and spiritual body in the area of her head was literally flushed down the toilet, sending it into the depths of the spheres. Stepan couldn't vouch for it, but it seemed to him in the st images that the spirit sent before its panicked disappearance into the vortex, the cssic “b-bitch-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!!!”, but he wouldn't dare to vouch for it.

  Back in bed, the priestess twisted around some more then pulled up her shirt and brought herself to orgasm in a matter of minutes, before settling down and falling asleep almost instantly. Well, after that, the argument could be considered officially lost on the Earthman's part, and he wasn't going to prove the untenability of someone else's victory anyway. But for another hour and a half, he searched his contracts among the spirits who knew about curses and hoped very much that he would be able to overcome such an effect and remove it. In his dreams, he had visions of a meeting of the “club of anonymous dislike of the Life-Giver”, in which he was obsessively offered the pce of honorary first chairman for the period from here to the end of January, and he shot back with a double-barrelled shotgun a DOOM, now and then inserting quotes from Duke Nukem in moments of special moral and physical tension.

  * * *

  The prayer service over the grain and other sowing materials was over, and the whole vilge was celebrating the excellent harvest with joy and cheerfulness, even seeming to have almost forgotten about the recent sorrow that had happened here. Stepan, who had attended the very beginning of the celebration, managed to slip away before they tried to get him drunk again. Shera, tired and not really in the mood for noisy celebrations, also slipped away after him, only to drink a cup with Kirik, completing their deal and confirming the debt scroll already signed for her temple. By the way, Kirik could hardly write, it came out very badly, though he read much better, but he wrote his name on the paper by memory, just as a picture, and not by making it out of separate letters, which made it very beautiful.

  “No, you certainly had your chances, honestly.” Is it even normal for his Shera to comfort him, taking silence for brokenness and moral breakdown? “Really, I'm not kidding. I'm still lucky I caught on to something and woke up too soon. I didn't even realize how it happened anyway. I still dream that I'm riding you, and now I'm standing in front of the door, ready to go barefoot and barely clothed outside, to you. That's what you should be whipped for, Pann! You could catch a cold, and then you'd have to pray instead of the ritual over Kirik's grain. You could have cured me, you're a healer, but still, it was irresponsible, you shouldn't behave like that.”

  Stepan only nodded, agreed, acknowledged, apologized, and inwardly clenched his asshole in anticipation of the inevitable reckoning for all the good things. Shera herself felt some awkwardness from the whole situation and, chewing her lower lip, looked at Stepan as if deciding on something, and then quietly but firmly said that she was giving him one st chance to accept defeat without finishing the bet because she felt indebted to him and just didn't want to hurt his pride for her amusement. Feeling like a complete asshole himself, because he just about won the bet, Stepan still presses the situation to the end.

  “No, Shera, I'm grateful to you, but my pride will survive this month, but my honesty won't.” He seemed a degenerate to himself, and time after time he was asking for a curse, driven by greed, stubbornness, and unwillingness to let the contracts already prepared and paid for a week in advance go to waste. “I promised and swore before the spirits, I tried, time after time refusing your offer, thinking I was smarter than everyone else, I failed in this attempt to get you, only almost made you catch a cold. So I'm going to deserve it, that's all.”

  Shera looks at him with an attentive gaze, but he meets that gaze without fear or uncertainty, well, almost. In any case, the carefully chosen phrase doesn't contain a lie, so there's no need to worry about a truth check. The priestess looks as if deciding something herself, and then smiles with an anticipatory and slightly sinister grin, standing on her toes and sealing her companion's lips with a kiss that is long, wet, and not so much passionate as cozy. When she pulls her lips away from his, it's clear she's made her decision and won't change it.

  “So pity, but I don't think I'll be able to stay here long enough, the ship will arrive either tonight at dark or tomorrow morning. The amulet from the council is heated, so they are already close. This way they are signaling to officials.” To confirm her words, she raised a small copper and silver pque on a copper chain, which indeed carried the simplest magic of simirity, reacting to the approach of the base. “It's a pity I won't be able to py with you as I want, but maybe that's what She decided to test me for, eh? Sit on the bed, Pann, and yes, I suggest you take off your pants, just as a friend.”

  He accepted the friendly advice, a little pale from the overflowing emotions, among which prevailed the usual anger at his own stubbornness, which did not allow him to turn from the chosen path, even if it was a stupid path, there was no further to go. And what if his attempts to remove the influence would not help? What if they only make it worse? What if he's completely fucked up? What if Gaia detects Stepan's system through the curse? What if she's really in league with the Autogoddess and gives her a sign of an unauthorized chosen one? And if, and if suddenly, and then...

  “Don't worry, I've done this many times before, and you know, no one has ever compined..... I mean, they did, but they had a reason, didn't they, my sweet Pann?” Her hands y on his hips, warm and soft, even caring, radiating a soothing flow of kind and calm power that actually made it easier for him to rex and exhale. “Rex your aura, do not resist my will and Her grace, accept it as it is proper, and do not hide your face in fear.”

  Her palms shifted from his hips to his loins, and then to his scrotum, causing his cock to harden quickly, literally against his will and despite all possible exhortations of reason. Slightly glowing golden hands leaned on his balls, pressing them, and Shera smiled a vulgar, satisfied, and so anticipatory smile that it made him think of a predatory beast, not a man, but it didn't look creepy, but so arousing that he had no strength to keep a poker face.

  “That's it, sweetie, now I begin to give you repentance, don't resist, and don't be afraid, I will be here by your side the whole time.” She speaks, tightening her grip slightly but not making it painful even in the least, and then she begins to speak, but now her voice is full of power, sounding distant and echoing, bringing with it a piece of the power of her deity. “Let the seed accumute, let it accumute, let the young man be filled with excess seed, let the passion boil, let it spsh in him, let him overflow with her will, let the loins burn, let their passion be quenched, let the young man erupt with seed, let the seed boil, let it be replenished, let him be bathed in passion time after time, let him bow before her countenance, let him repent in haste from moon to moon!”

  With every word she said, a force flowed into his body and aura, alien, but as gentle as possible, so that it was not held back at all by the natural resistance that he had and still had. Yes, now I see why people around him are so afraid of Gaia's curses, why they are so unstoppable. To cause harm with such an effect, one must try very hard, to put in an inordinate amount of effort for the sake of minimal effect. But those actions that do not cause direct harm, but coincide with the aspects and gifts of the Fertile.... they become surprisingly inescapable, even when performed by very fresh novices who have just touched their first priestly ordinances.

  All these thoughts filled his head with violent streams and gradually left his head. It was as if he was filled with a warm and soft wave of someone else's power. It removed anxiety and apprehension, leaving only passion and the feeling of an infted balloon, as he realized himself to be. It was as if several liters of chamomile tea and honey had been poured through his balls and now there were no thoughts left in his head, washed them all away, and dissolved them. He looked at the smiling Shera and thought that he should have smiled back, but he had to do something, and he didn't want to do anything, but the smile crept onto his face anyway. Fortunately, the woman understood exactly what her subject or victim was feeling, so she did not hesitate to throw back the pants she had taken off, calmly and without any ridicule, which he had expected in no small amount, especially given the nature of the priestess's predilections, which could more properly be called a banal fetish.

  “Get dressed, Pann, and then sit down.” She said, and he began to do it, feeling his mind returning to him, feeling the strange zy negativity in which he did not want to do anything, and when he got dressed he took a normal sitting position, and stopped lying like a doll with cut strings. “You know, I didn't mean to bring it all to this, but, in Her name, some men are neither fearful nor cautious. I was honestly going to say no, even now. No, don't think I liked you before when I first met you, but it was only after talking to you that it became clear to me how unspoiled by the big world you are. So consider that I'm not so much doing this for my pleasure as I am giving you a lesson, maybe it will save your life. Later. In the future.”

  Stepan's face clearly showed bewilderment, and he felt a slight and slightly muted anxiety. It was muted not only by the remnants of sensations from alien and divine magic but simply because he did not perceive Shera as dangerous, even without magic.

  “I told you why I liked my fun so much, why I was so keen to make men dirty their pants, didn't I? I told you, yes, but the ending of that story is quite different from where I left off.” Her smile was soft again, without any predatory nature, but he involuntarily got goosebumps on his back, and he suppressed the instinctive urge to tense his aura and roll all over his body with a wave of magical power, tearing the shroud and preparing for danger. “Those four thugs who attacked me and Aunt Vavia, they all died, but we didn't kill them. We can't. We are almost never able to cut a life short. They were all hanged, for robbery and assaulting the priestesses of Gaia, only they came to the nearest horse track by themselves, on Aunt Vavia's word. Yes, yes, don't round your eyes, Pann, you've got it right, in one of the variants of the prayer, the imposed Overflow of Passion acts in a way that subdues the will. It makes the sinner like a little child who will go anywhere at the command of his mother, who is the Giver of Life, and his elder sister, who will be the priestess who will carry out her will. It is the same prayer, all honestly agreed upon, only slightly modified, more profound in its essence and Her goodness.”

  He was still staring at her, trying to understand what she was saying, even though he'd heard what she'd said, but it didn't fit with his ideas of what a priestess who'd gotten her fetishes out of her system would do to a shaman she'd cursed. Her words and her piercing gaze literally broke the tempte along with the grooves, calling for a slight panic and attempts to find the curse in the aura, which was too much merged with that aura, not showing up under the shaman's senses to a sufficient degree for understanding.

  "It doesn't work for long. It disappears quickly, and you also can't order them to hurt themselves, but telling them to follow and hand them over to the guards... yes, it worked, nice and easy. You see, Pann? You willingly let me put this prayer on you, you didn't even resist in the slightest. You yourself didn't even check our pact or my word. You yourself did not crify the boundaries of the prayer's influence." She smiled brightly, caring and gentle, but at the same time, the boy was a little covered with a beted fear. "Besides, you foolish boy, you were eager to do it, even though I told you not to. And no, I won't kill you, rob you, do you any harm, no. You are a good, really good man, and your grandfather, all my respects to him and his memory. He brought you up properly but did not teach you that you can't trust the world and those who live in it too much. Now you feel good, pleasant and only in the deepest part of your mind a little bit afraid, and remember this fear, Pann, because I like you and I do not want to harm you, as I have seen only good from you. Remember and do not show such stupid and, forgive me Life-giver, absolutely idiotic, as the mind of the sorrowful and crippled head, gullibility and self-confidence. Otherwise, whoever is ever in my pce will do this."

  Stepan had almost managed to overcome the remnants of tenderness and calmness, almost managed to force himself to tear off the Shroud and strike with a spiritual limb... No, not Shera, he simply could not wish her harm, but himself, right in the center of the loins, next to the auric node of the tantric hearth, trying to damage the basis of the divine influence. He almost made it. Almost, a couple of seconds short of it. Shera unbuttoned the already barely held colr of her dress, exposing her breasts, tits, melons, milkers, and boobs. He saw their every movement, bouncing as they fell out of the tight fabric embrace. He saw it incredibly clear and crisp. He remembered thinking that the effects of the curse could be resisted since the reaction was purely physical and could be corrected and suppressed by medical treatment of the right nerve nodes.

  A naive earthy young man, hell, so naive!

  There was no resistance, no warning or prerequisites: here he was, looking at those tits he had known so many times, at the pink areoe of her nipples, feeling the faintest shadow of a hand in his groin, squeezing his balls and cock, and then it was cascading. His cock twitched a little. It hardened instantly, two beats of a rapidly beating heart echoed in it, but before it was fully hard, he was already caught up in an orgasm, combined with a tremendously violent eruption right into the clothes that had been carefully filed and dressed. There was no strength to hold back the moan, it was simply impossible to hold it back, the pleasure and the animal desire not to stop what was happening made him fall off the bed, frantically jerking his pelvis in an attempt to slightly extend the already unnaturally long burst of pleasure. He could feel the passion spurting out of him jet after jet, but he couldn't bring himself to at least cover himself, he didn't want to stop, didn't want the pleasant warmth and the feeling of someone's impossibly powerful and satisfying grip on his balls to go away at all. So he thrashed in ecstasy on the floor for an unknown amount of time before consciousness returned to a retively normal state in which he could at least think.

  "How was it, Pann? Did you like it? No, no, don't answer, look at me, darling, look at me." Shera speaks to him, and he hears her, and when he hears, he listens, he just can't help but listen, unable to disobey, even though he realizes the wrongness of his condition in some corner of his mind, but not even a thought of resistance appeared, so he really looked, even without standing up, at the way Shera pulled up her dress, exposing her legs and her pussy, already glistening with excitement. "Now crawl to me, on all fours, like a doggie. Crawl over and start licking, for all the pleasure I've given you, lick and kiss me there, py with my bud with your tongue, oh-oh-oh-oh, you're a skillful boy after all, oh, that's it, yes!"

  Stepan, without the slightest attempt to resist her orders, crawled on all fours, without getting on his feet, as she had said, to her crotch, pressed his face into her slightly overgrown pubis, which she was obviously caring for, and began to lick it. Willingly, obediently, gdly even, and he had no doubt that she could have asked him to bark, he would not have refused, he would not even have thought to resent it. His consciousness swam and drifted away, but his tongue and her pussy, her bud, her seemingly deliciously sweet twat, they existed outside of time and space, and so he licked, listening to her moans, but still licking, not stopping even when she pressed his face into her slit with all her might, clutching his head with her thighs, releasing her love juices onto his lips and tongue, almost screaming with pleasure. He only slid his tongue even deeper into her, pping at the bump of her clit with his lips, trying to bring her as many pleasurable moments as possible.

  This went on for a while longer before it let him go a little. He realized himself again as Stepan, not an appendage to his tongue, whose raison d'être remained the sweet Shera's pussy. She was lying on his bed, rexed and content, fully clothed, even with her dress down, and he was sitting at her feet, on his knees, as she had once joked, kneeling in service to the Giver of Life. Little by little his groin felt uncomfortably wet and moist, streams of seed had hopelessly stained his clothes, and if he didn't want to be disgraced by the whole vilge, he would have to clean himself somehow, ter, when it became interesting to him again, for now he had Shera to decide for himself and tell him what he was even interested in and needed.

  “Is it letting you go or still keeping you?” In a smooth and zy, nonchant, and calm tone, she crifies, sitting down on the bed again and carefully making sure not to give him an extra glimpse of her naked body, which caused him some irrational resentment. Noticing his still lost but slightly more focused gaze, she begins to speak. “When you can get angry again, remind yourself, time after time, how many times I've suggested you drop it. Heh, I won't lie, in my original pn I would have used a simple Prayer of Repentance, not this variation of it. Few even among us priestesses are as proficient at it as I am. I learned it on purpose, I swore to myself that day that I would learn it as well. But I'm sorry, I had to rub your face in your silly bravado to make it stick. And a polished flower is the price you pay for that lesson. By tomorrow morning your servitude will be gone like water, and the rest of the moon will be a regur overflow on you, so it's better not to think vulgar thoughts and dream about tits in front of honest people. I'll be on the ship by then, or I'll even be able to sail... Take care of yourself, silly Pann, and don't be so gullible, so, oh, so foolishly naive, okay? I don't want to hear about your ignominious and foolish death one day, just like you. Farewell, then, and forgive me for my lesson. I will not hide it, I have spent it at my pleasure.”

  She got up. She helped him up and onto the bed, put a pillow under him, and only then got herself together, and drank the herbal decoction, still warm from brewing. She stood for a moment in front of the closed door but addressed him.

  "Are you angry?" If Stepan had been in a normal state of mind, he would have bet his clearing against a penny that the woman was overcome by a sudden attack of shame. "Just answer honestly."

  "I don't know, Shera." The answer was brutally honest, only sleepy and forced out because he had to break through the submissive tenderness that had been imposed on him. "I really am a fool for getting into this. You really did offer, almost begged me to refuse. I should have listened to you."

  If she began to ask deeper questions, to inquire as to the reasons why he had been so insistent on closing this dispute with her victory in the first pce, his secret would be revealed. The realization of the danger that had passed close by, the realization that he was about to tell her everything humbly and candidly, came and went, indifferently met by his bewitched mind. She asked a few more questions, but to his delight, the priestess was interested in something else entirely. She asked if he liked her or only interacted with her because she was a priestess. She asked how he felt about her and her religion, her goddess. Asked, in passing and immediately apologizing, if he had actually helped the vilge, rather than first helping them get sick and then coming to their aid. After the st question she blushed and apologized for two or three minutes, sincerely and even shamefully, and it was obvious that she was more ashamed of such a question, of having thought of such a thing at all, than of the dishonest and devious trick she had pulled on the young man's will.

  He answered without stammering, without trying to be coy or deceitful, without even holding anything back, talking about everything. He liked her, and though at the beginning he had been afraid of her and was ready to fight to the death, and then, after that night, he suspected her of bad things, but in time the sympathy had become pure and full. He talked about how pleasant it was for him to communicate with her and learn new things from her, how pleased he was that she did not mock how little he knew about the world around him. He told how he could not pass by the dying settlement and that no reward - fortunately, it was not necessary to specify that he meant not only material but also systemic - would not have made him work as hard as the opportunity not to let ordinary people die, who also accepted him with all warmth and care, especially against the background of the fact that before that he had not seen much good from people on his way.

  They didn't talk very long, less than half an hour, and by the end of it, Shera seemed to feel like a total asshole for her suspicions. Kissing him goodbye, she turned around, in the doorway, grinning again with a predatory grin, and then pulled her dress up, exposing her legs, slowly-slowly opening her buttocks, ass, butt, making him feel the same sensations again, continuously and abundantly down his pants. Through his own moans and the frantic pounding of blood in his ears, he heard her st order, barely audible against the barrage of sensations.

  "Sleep, Pann, sleep and rest." She said with a touch of sadness, as well as a touch of anger, and he, already following that order, still heard the phrase that wasn't meant for him. "Why the fuck do I feel like a fucking bitch now, huh? Why didn't he, the little bastard, turn out to be a normal man, cute on the outside and ugly on the inside? Why did I even think..."

  Sleep came instantly and this time the young shaman didn't dream of anything.

  * * *

  Stepan was doing something quite familiar to himself back on Earth, soothing and even a little recreational. He was desperately cursing himself for doing not as it was smarter, but as Stepan had done. This had caused him problems all his life - the ability to lock horns and refuse to recognize the futility of any activity until you've smashed your forehead. For this very reason, he categorically refused to gamble and always took all the achieves in any computer game. Perfectionism in his commitments, multiplied by his willingness to put in the effort and pity for those efforts he had already put in, always forced him to retreat from any goal that he had already started to achieve with a great deal of creaking. It wasn't the worst trait, it was thanks to it, to donkey's stubbornness and willingness to work for his good that he managed to achieve a lot, but this situation also arose because of the same trait.

  He woke up the next morning. The first thing he did was to clean himself and be gd that no one had found him in such a state and with stains on his clothes. He even behaved retively calmly when he learned from Meld, who had brought him breakfast, that an honorable priestess of the Life-Giver named Shera had been taken away by a ship passing the vilge in the early morning. The ship had only been docked for a couple of hours, but Kirik had managed to bargain with them for fresh baked goods and hot food, as there were still supplies left over from the feast, and they had cooked for the usual number of inhabitants, not taking into account the recent losses. After waving goodbye to everyone around her - figuratively speaking, but in reality just a warm farewell - the priestess took with her a receipt from the headman and left Upper Lyady in a good mood. Now that the sun was nearing its zenith, she would surely be far away from Stepan and his persistent questions.

  No, he remained calm even after hearing all this. It would have been strange if the priestess hadn't left by now, but even if she were still in the vilge, Stepan himself would have left. As long as her cursed influence was on him, he'd better not cross paths with her, even in the smallest measure. Not to cross paths with any beautiful or at least not ugly girl, not even to look at pictures. As practice has shown, if Gaia's grip on the balls tightened, then willpower, self-control or the ability to turn off carnal attraction directly by maniputing one's own spiritual body means nothing - it's not that the victim doesn't have time to use it all, no, the victim doesn't want to resist at all. The memory of Shera's description of the fate of the murderers who had attacked her and her mentor made her shiver and fear finally broke through to consciousness. Not terror and panic, but fear. The kind that, you know, motivated and encouraged rather than paralyzing will and thought. It wasn't fear that had paralyzed his will and thinking yesterday, no.

  He had to admit, with gritted teeth and a slight longing to clutch Shera's tender neck and strangle her a little, not to death, that her “lesson” had really worked. He wouldn't allow such idiocy again, and he certainly wouldn't voluntarily give himself any curses or magical influences unknown to him. And he probably shouldn't do the well-known ones either, his knowledge base on love spells had many examples of how a hidden and insidious action could be hidden behind a routine healer's examination or the closing of a dangerous wound. Thank you, Shera, thank you for your concern. Your sweet Pann rated it a ten out of ten! The worst part was that she was right. He'd refused to notice her hints, and then he'd asked her to drop the stupid argument and just spend the rest of the time in each other's company. And maybe not just the rest of the time, by the looks of it, because the priestess might well have been hoping for something more permanent, and he'd seen hints that she might help him move closer to the center of civilization. Yeah, well, maybe from her side it was really the equivalent of a smack to a little moron sticking his fingers in a the, only combined with personal revenge and resentment for the de facto refusal to show his feelings. It is difficult to forgive and understand, of course, but even more difficult not to realize his idiocy, close in its characteristics to that of his unfortunate namesake. The unfttering comparison only added shame and headache to the already shitty mood of the young tramp.

  But that was all right. He would have been able to survive the lesson he had learned, benefit from it, and then move on without unnecessary moral turmoil and hidden resentments, if not for the fact that all his sufferings and humiliations were not exactly wasted, but much less justified than he wanted. As he had feared, the great and mighty Milferatress of the universe had given the elite meta-skill at her sick discretion, and so it remained elite, but rather... specific. Well, it was worth admitting that it could have been much worse, if he had gotten, for example, the ability to see women naked through any clothes or something like that, but the elite talent was still really useful, it was just a hell of a thing to use.

  The skill added to the status was called “small system endowment of characteristics”, allowing... Yes, yes, that's right, to add characteristics to someone's Status, even if he has no system. Just like that, no properties, no changes in the aura, at a level not even avaible to the local gods. From one to ten units to random attributes, which will allow, with luck, to transfer a completely ungifted individual into the analog of a strong apprentice, or even a weak adept, if all the points go in the Control with the Source. What is there about the ungifted or weak disciples, for whom this gift will be manna from heaven? The effect of the skill was simir even for masters and higher ranks, that's where the shtick! If plus one to the Source for a beginner magician of any direction will be a question quite solvable and depending on not so big money, the same miserable unit for the master - the bor of many years, and even decades, spent mountains of gold and deposits of silver, a lot of anguish and effort, their own and others. After all, the importance of each new unit is higher and higher, and there are ten of them at once.

  In general, such a blessing from Stepan's hands could not only begin to kill, here and a full-fledged military conflict many people would dare to initiate, and those “many” who have the authority for such an initiation are quite enough. Only two facts upset the shaman: the impossibility of using the gift on himself and the unreality of using it in such a way that it would not attract grief, fear, darkness, nightmare, horror, and rivers of blood from those who would then go after his head. And the blood might well belong to Stepan, and not to those who came. That is, the gift was both really elite in all respects and, at the same time, completely useless for a loner deprived of connections and a pce in society. It was very much in the spirit of the Autogoddess, it would be, but there were also not enough perversions typical for this dy, wasn't it? That's right, that's right, it was missing, so she added some of her own.

  In the standard version, this skill-blessing was applied to anyone and anything, even a parrot, but not more than once a month, and the month is counted from the moment of acquiring this very system gift and the unused application is burned. Also not bad, but immediately creating an army of gifted will not work, maximum squad ... or he'll need to upgrade your existing meta-skill to higher levels. In the Milf Mistress modification, the system gift could still be cast on anyone once a month. Just look at the and then wish to bestow it on the recipient, not even a touch is required. The possibility of a miss tends to be zero. The System is focused on the user's desire, rather than a certain “sight”. But, if you impose the gift not just on the noone, but on a beautiful woman, and the one with whom the bearer of the system has already slept or at least had intimate contact, the pluses to the characteristics will be maximum - that is, of course, at once a ten, no less.

  The most frustrating thing is that this suitcase without a handle is a direct route to the local high society. For possession of such a resource, anyone, any ruler at all, would build a golden cage the size of a mansion and put Stepan in it for the rest of his life. The problem is not that Stepan doesn't want a golden cage; if someone offered him one, he wouldn't refuse it. The problem is that until he becomes at least a very strong master, or better, a magister, the earthling will not be able to defend himself. He didn't believe in the kindness and understanding of the upper csses of a magocratic css society with a bias toward the right of the strong, because his memories of how he'd been received in Fantrel were still too fresh. The way he'd been escorted out of there was very memorable. You can't go to a pawnshop and try to sell a diamond the size of a hen's egg without giving up the diamond, or even your life. A common man can't demonstrate the ability to shit gold and then avoid being put on a chair next to the toilet and the subsequent eternal diet of protein with xatives.

  Okay, he would have survived that, too, he wouldn't have even sworn much, not out loud, that's for sure. He was still holding on to the remnants of the moral willpower of the man who was staring into the eyes of the one-from-who-is-in-hell-locked-the-gate-from-inside. Another system task, which appeared before his eyes just half an hour after he had almost calmed down and prepared to eat, finished him off. It had finished him off with a guarantee, without a chance to keep calm and with a subsequent motherfucking tirade as long as the road from Warsaw to New York. However, it was not even the fact that he was given an assignment, but the fact that there were two assignments at once. One ordinary and normal, albeit average, and the second also average, from Autogoddess, with another incredibly tempting reward, and this time there were no accidents, everything is as clear as possible. Ah yes, one more important detail, just a tiny problem: accepting one assignment a priori excluded accepting the second one.

  System assignment (average): to get rid of the Life-giving priestess' influence on one's own body, aura, and spirit using only one's strength, gift, knowledge, and one's own summoned spirits. Satisfactory performance requires the removal of the influence before the end of its duration; full performance requires success within a week; perfect performance requires success within three days and on the first attempt.

  Reward: increased affinity with spirits of life spheres and curses, greatly reduced vulnerability of aural and spiritual bodies to any curses, including also divine curses; at full execution: increase one random meta-skill from those already avaible, increase one random knowledge from those already avaible; at perfect execution: permanent increase of the lowest characteristic by one unit (if the lowest value has two or more characteristics, the reward point will be invested randomly).

  No kidding, it was the perfect assignment, so much in line with Stepan's real intentions that it was foolish to even think of refusing. Especially now, when Shera had thoughtfully fled away, and therefore would not be able to notice the unrealistic, as for a weak shaman's apprentice, skill in removing divine influences. Actually, as soon as the young man learned about the departure of the priestess, he was even relieved that he wouldn't have to walk around with this bullshit in his aura and subtle bodies for some time. And here he would be paid extra for what he intended to do, and not just intended to do, but soberly assessed his strength and was confident in his own preparation - he would be able to get the curse of Overflowing Passion out of himself temporarily, not for a crime, but by mutual consent, and he would be able to do it safely and without getting hurt in the process.

  It seemed like a reason to improve his mood a little and forget about how it had been recently ruined by Shera and his idiocy. It's a great reason, Stepan, rejoice! But Stepan was not rejoicing. He was looking at the second of the two assignments, the one issued by the part of the system that had been modified by the Autogoddess. The swearings were cut off for a moment, and caution and the understanding that the addressee might hear his curses, but the emotional coloring, of course, did not go away.

  System assignment (average): to proudly and joyfully bear the blessing and curse of the Life Giver until the effect expires; to lead a daily intimate life, allowing a lover or lovers to enjoy the effect of divine attention with the gifted one. For satisfactory fulfillment it is necessary to give oneself to the caresses of at least one lover who shares the passion and fascination of the priestess who has imposed the effect; for complete fulfillment, it is necessary to give oneself to the power of at least two lovers, each of whom shares the passion and fascination of the priestess who has imposed the effect; for perfect fulfillment it is necessary to indulge publicly in the games and passion indicated at least five times. The use of the gifts of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney, is acceptable and desirable.

  Reward: a significant increase in the effectiveness of the love spells, a significant increase in the probability of the talents of the seduction branch appearing among the talents avaible for selection at level up, three free talent points, one of which can be invested only in knowledge, the second only in properties, and the third only in meta-skills, one free characteristic unit; at full performance: multiplication of the standard reward by the number of lovers who shared the passion of the affected priestess; at perfect performance: five free characteristic units on top of the already taken

  Having read and reread the rather confusing word ce several times in a row, Stepan sharply put his hand to his head, feeling his out-of-control eyebrow twitching as if it were living its own life. Once again, after reading the assignment, and rereading it using the system help so that he wouldn't make any mistakes, he understood roughly what was expected of him in the assignment. Worst of all, he realized that he could do it. How hard could it be to select a few pretty and demeanable vilgers, brainwash them, even without the help of the Sleepwalker, whose summons would not be enough for all of them anyway, with his personal skill, instill a fetish simir to Shera's, and then let them “take advantage of the situation”?

  To put, through spirits-sleepers and a couple of specific appeals false memories of how leaving Shera told them herself “in confidence” that the next month from one shaman can be twisted ropes if you show tits. Then remove all moral barriers, add courage, and distort consciousness to avoid rumors or some inadequate actions with attempts to marry a visiting magician forcefully. Here you are, Stepan, a couple or three vilgers, every day deciding to “py” with poor Pann, showing him tits and ughing at how he goes cum at the mere sight of them. Polishing slits with tongue and other elements of female dominance over male alpha pride are included in the package, and if any of the vilgers is still too unspoiled, you can give her the necessary thoughts through the spirits, there will be both those that can corrupt, and those that will transmit ideas and thoughts from the head of the shaman, convincing the girls to realize these thoughts and images from pornhub as if they had thought up and invented everything. Public games can also be arranged just by paying attention to some and changing the very concept of normality in the heads of the rest. There are only ungifted in the vilge. No need to spend special forces. The most primitive influences will suffice. Even with the scenarios it is not necessary to think much - the same inn, where the girls will sit down to the shaman at the table, cover him from views with their own bodies, quietly lift the hems of skirts....

  Stepan had to influence himself by quickly controlling his subtle body with his spirit. He prevented a burst of excitement so he would not be embarrassed by the picture, still under the effect of the curse from the good Shera. But even in his state of cold mind, his consciousness, cold and calm, was calcuting every possible benefit. How many good-looking girls and women were there in Upper Lyady that he would not mind getting intimate with? Five, even seven, if you counted a couple of too-young flowers. But five, let it be: that's still fifteen talent points, five stat points, and five more of the same stat points on top, for perfect execution. The opportunity, having invested it correctly, to go immediately from almost-master to already-exactly-master, to become a full-fledged Senior Shaman and immediately gain very impressive lines in the Status. Those lines on which he cks characteristics, to increase the same manipution of his spirit, to acquire a bunch of synergistic properties, to develop up to a triple enhancement of rewards for assignments.... all of this can be obtained in just a month of humiliation, which no one forbids him to erase the memory of all involved.

  No one will know.

  No one will remember.

  Except Stepan.

  “Gee, s-s-s-s-s-thank you for caring.” He hissed as if he'd been nominated for the role of Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter reboot, literally squeezing his will into a choice that was a real mistake and one he might regret.

  There was no “maybe” about it. He had already regretted that decision, though not even five seconds had passed since he had chosen one of the two assignments. He looked around the vilge with a calm and confident gaze, calcuted where his “targets” lived, most of whom were already either married or betrothed, calcuted which spirits to call to correct the consciousness of the victims in the first pce, and then turned to his clearing and went forward without looking back. As, but whether he was too correct, or too moral, or simply he was so pissed off by the generosity of the Autogoddess that he again sent her offer away, despite all the benefits. He brazenly dropped, deleted, refused, committed an incredible stupidity, and lost a chance for which the local mages would have sold their kidney and firstborn child.

  But for some reason, this time, his smile seemed not just angry and motivated, but almost happy. Probably, it was because he would take the lost fifteen talents and ten characteristics from the system himself, one way or another, by more standard means. And for her sick fantasies let the Autogoddess look for some other Stepans. He even knew the address of one such. Ahead was quite a heavy ritual. He must succeed with one and only the very first attempt, which means that he had no right to make a mistake. If he wastes the second favorite chance to increase the characteristics for free and without risk he will not forgive himself. But despite all the difficulties, Stepan had no regrets.

  Well, almost.

  * * *

  THE STATUS OF STEPAN "NORMAL" AS OF THE END OF CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  Level: 15

  Css: Shaman

  Characteristics: (free: 0)

  Talents (free): 0

  Constitution: 1

  Sensitivity: 7

  Power: 5

  Control: 2

  Source: 4

  Spirit: 8

  Resistance: 1

  Knowledge acquired: speaking and writing: Free Cities, academic Neirat, Isnd Kingdom; advanced developed call practice; advanced fundamentals of spiritual dialog; wilderness hermit; advanced basics of working with healing spirits; advanced basics of casting shamanic charms (GIFT); basic techniques of dream-inducing and dream correction (GIFT); the advanced basic practice of combat calls; basic techniques of interaction with magical sources; basic techniques of countering curses: basic fundamentals of fast call; the advanced basic practice of spiritual operation; the knack of a martial call; basics of spiritual haggling and contract agreements with otherworldly entities; the basic practice of remote control of spiritual entities; basic methods of teaching magical sciences; basic methods of tantric practices; basic methods of territorial influences; basics of work with totems

  Minor knowledge: contract with an elder spirit: Sleepwalker (GIFT); contract with the elder spirits: The Shroud of Touch and the Creator of Decisions (GIFT); a contract with a strong spirit: The Eater of Diseases.

  Obtained properties: blessings of health and long life; toughness of spirit; resilience of subtle bodies; small mark of spiritual spheres: spiritual shroud of higher auric concealment (GIFT); flexible transformation of the spiritual body; marking of fallen leaves and bck roots; a tantric spiritual hearth

  System modifiers: peaceful development III; issuance of system assignments III; lecherous development II (GIFT); access to system purchases III; small system endowment of characteristics

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

  * * *Author's Note:

  Huh, I'm still worthy! (c)

  It was an extremely long - I'm dumbfounded, to be honest - chapter, and the dice were acting crazy. To begin with, the hero had every chance to eat his fish and not to sit on the sharpened spades.

  At first, he rolled for social like a god, which made Shera almost honeyed over him, even though she had no help from Sleepwalker or other charms (although there were moments of pleasure from sex under the tantric hearth, but tiny). There was such sympathy that she - voluntarily, Karl - offered to stop the bet, just not to make fun of the handsome guy, who also gave her a gift that was simply royal, as for a priestess who was always wandering around!

  And he had every chance of quietly collecting five points in meta-skills and winning even a mega-skill.

  You still don't get it? Look: Shera proposes at the very st minute to blow off the bet and just have sex, period. The hero refuses because he needs Shera to win the argument and leave the vilge, thinking she's the coolest and the winner. The question, Connoisseurs, is why doesn't he have the most trivial conversation - admit that he screwed up and Shera won and bow his head in guilt. Then the priestess, who is extremely sympathetic to him, would simply accept the rules of the game, saying that, okay, I won, and now come to me.

  But no, this genius showed his now anti-social skills, literally twisting the promised priestess's hands to curse him. In fact, he forced her to do it! In the original pn, if MC hadn't rolled for Shera's sympathy for him, she would have just had fun with him in the “basic” version of the curse, said goodbye with a couple of dubious witticisms, and gone about her business. But here, she sympathized with him SO MUCH.

  BUT

  BUT!!!

  BUUUT!!!

  Because the priestess really started to sympathize with the hero, she first convinces him not to be stupid for a long time, and then, after he stomped on her feelings a bit, decides to give him a lesson, which is that you, the moron, can't be such a naive moron.

  In the end, instead of the final hentai scene, it was a hell of a thing and almost no hentai, Shera got a slight dysmorality and will now be a bit chewed up by her conscience, but yes, the hero did get his super-skill. In the dice, it looked just idiotic, but in the text description, it's even worse. :)

  P.S. At st the hero got the knowledge of totems, finally! Already in the comments began to fuss that he should have gotten them a long time ago since he works so much with them. It's done.

  P.P.S. The only re-roll I made was for the “offer of the week” decision. I messed up something with the mechanics and it came out that MC was definitely buying super stockings. But I twisted this thought in different ways, not finding any reason why the hero in his character would do such a stupid thing. He will not wear it. Sell it. So, damn, to whom? There were two options: repce the Autogoddess's fitting with something useful or not buy it. The second option seemed to me smarter and more logical. I still can't figure out how my modifiers worked out that way, but we'll fix it, yeah.