A treatment block hit the surprised portaler along with Yar Solid’s words, “Sorry, dude. It’s my fault. I’ll compensate you for the vehicle, so please don’t worry.”
Removing the portaler from the rack, Yar came back to his now-familiar shed.
Chapter 56. The Ripper of the Past
“W e, we don’t…”
“Shut up, bastards!” Ahas Butcher, the head of the Syndicate, yelled. Then he uttered the untranslatable into normal language, innovative-emotional profanity.
The permanent leader of the most dangerous criminal community in the capital had been cursing at his best investigators and security service for about thirty minutes.
“Hey! Hey! What’s happening?! Someone or something has penetrated our most protected place! It is thirty feet below ground, by the way! He killed my best workers like they were small insects, took the portaler, and disappeared. What are you trying to explain to me? Why do you say that this is impossible?”
“Butcher, we need to call Cyanotic,” the head of security said with guilty intonations in his voice.
Butcher’s blow was unexpected, almost imperceptible. A big chopping ax struck the man’s chest, and Ahas Butcher grimaced in disgust, reproaching himself for not having done this before.
“The yndicate has a vacancy for the head of security,” Ahas said seriously.
He also thought that he needed to call Eott Cyanotic immediately—a specialist in super-complex investigations.
This person was brought to the Syndicate almost immediately. A tight bag was thrown over his head, tied around his neck, and then he was escorted into the Syndicate’s reverse tower to the very doors of the torture room. They apologized to him and removed the bag from his head.
Eott Cyanotic looked thin and exhausted. He seemed to be going to meet his forefathers.
However, he moved quickly and acted effectively. Eott was lanky and narrow-shouldered, with a hooked nose and large nostrils. He had dark spots under his eyes, his bluish lips were compressed tightly, his forehead was high, smooth, with a tattoo of a large two-pupil eye, and his hair was thin and sparse. In general, Eott was more like the herald of the apocalypse than a famous investigator.
“Where?” He rustled like dry foliage.
“Here,” the guard said, trying to open the massive door to the torture room.
“It’s needless,” Eott said quietly, his long, thin fingers, as if covered with black-lacquered plastic, pushed the massive security guard away from the door without any difficulty, as if he was a papier-mâché model.
Eott stared at the door like an animal, as if he was going to gobble it up. The wizard stretched his long neck, and in one sharp motion, he threw off his hoodie and pulled tampons out of his nostrils, throwing the clothes away like old skin. It turned out that the entire body of the best investigator was covered with a shiny black film, as if it were encased by oil.
He had ceased to be like any races from the Belt of the Worlds. His appearance was a mixture of a living skeleton with the habits and motility of a praying mantis.
Stretching his long arms forward, he inhaled deeply and came close to the door in two jerky steps, his massive head sinking sharply as it turned almost close to the handle. It looked so unnatural that one of the observers screamed, clutching his neck in dismay. Eott froze for about ten seconds, then he shook his head, as if confirming a certain conjecture, straightened up and opened the door abruptly.
Cyanotic did not enter the room. Instead, standing on the spot, he snatched a piece of mist from the air and began to knead it with his hands, as if he wanted to make a snowball while whispering a song, but in such a way that nothing could be disassembled. Then he threw this incomprehensible ball into the torture room, and it was immediately clouded with a thick fog. The gray mist hung shortly in the air and then faded.
Multicolored arrows of different widths and saturations covered the entire space of the torture room. They were signed by unfamiliar letters, and sometimes they were crossed out with red strokes. The floor was also marked up, the contours of the defeated people stood out with a marker, or rather, the places where they once lay.
A list of data hung near the wall, and this alien sorcerer seemed to understand the language in which it was written. The strange investigator had a clear interest in what was happening. He then smiled—if the eerie grin of his sharp triangular incisors could be called a smile.
“Done! I have discovered all that is possible to do so.” Cyanotic sighed loudly with satisfaction, and his face turned slightly red and did no longer looked like a dead man who had been forgotten about in a morgue.
“Eott, I hope you, as always, will untie all these sea knots?” the head of the Syndicate, of course, had in mind the color jumble of arrows, pointers and some marks hanging in the air.
“Of course, Ahas, of course ... We can enter the room now that our presence does not hurt the created layout. We have ten minutes.” He boldly went to the Syndicate’s torture room.
“Well, you freaked out here,” the impressed Ahas, looking around, spoke out. “Come on, don’t postpone things. Tell of what you have discovered, host of forbidden magic.”
The best private investigator bowed and monotonously, but at least clearly, began his report. “The attacker appeared to be alone. It was a young human, and he used the portal twice. He came from the seaport area and headed back there afterward. Each of your people received one mortal blow. The killings, in total, took no more than sixteen seconds. Conclusion. Your attacker is an incredibly fast and skillful wizard and, most likely, a sword master.”
“Well, well,” the head of the Syndicate muttered thoughtfully and, after apologizing for interrupting, he asked the investigator to continue.
Eott nodded. “As for the incomprehensible and the unexplainable. For the first time during many hundreds of years, my spell couldn’t determine the main thing—the name, level, type of magic used, and his specialization.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” Eott answered shortly, swaying monotonously, apparently, being in prostration. Hidden thoughts drove him into a stupor.
“Thank you for your work, Eott,” Butcher said, looking curiously at the puzzle hanging in the air right in front of him. “But it’s not enough for me. I know you can do more.”
After a short pause, the investigator said, “I can, but it will involve big expense to steal from the past.”
“The Syndicate will pay any price; consider yourself to have an unlimited budget.”
Eott paused, apparently thinking about the pros and cons, and then with a terrible and tense face, he suddenly said, “I will do it for free. But I ask the Syndicate to give me one favor in return.”
“What favor?” Butcher asked in surprise, realizing that the Syndicate had just saved a few million gold coins.
“I want to survive, Butcher. I need the oath of the head of the organization to the System that the Syndicate will not attempt to liquidate me or keep me, and also refrain from any other malicious actions against me, for the next hundred years.”
“What is so terrible in the past? It seems like you didn’t tell us everything.”
Eott shook his big head.
“I swear by the System, I deciphered everything that I could,” the investigator whispered earnestly.
“Okay!” Ahas waved his hand in agreeing to the deal. “I, the head of the Syndicate, Ahas Butcher, swear that my organization will not attempt to liquidate, hold, or take any other malicious actions against Eott Cyanotic for a hundred years.”
Then he shouted, “I ask the Great System to register my oath!”
Butcher’s repeated echo had not yet disappeared, before the investigator put some strange herbal gloves on his thin fingers and took out a large transparent crystal carefully.
He explained softly, “I’ve prepared it for three years, just for such an occasion.”
Eott once again looked at the designations hanging in the air, apparently for reinsurance.<
br />
“Who here that wants to see the past, please go to the wall. During the spell, I ask you not to be surprised. We are bystanders, hidden by the veil of time. However, it is strictly forbidden to make noise, move, or speak. Any action anyone here makes can lead to disastrous consequences.”
None of the Syndicate representatives left the room. Eott grinned, looking at the frozen in anticipation gangsters, and then he dropped the crystal.
A transparent crystal hit the stone base and jumped a few inches from the surface. For a few moments, almost nothing happened, except that the crystal itself became intensely blue. Suddenly, the crystal vibrated noticeably for everyone, very quickly reinforcing this furious shaking and simultaneously absorbing everything that was hanging in the air: incomprehensible symbols, inscriptions, and arrows. An explosion followed—and it seemed that the tank of blue paint was poured into the torture room, covering everything: the floor, the walls, the ceiling, even the viewers themselves. It then became clear why Eott was nicknamed Cyanotic.
***
There was utter silence. They did not have time to get scared. The past was overwhelmed by smells, light, and a deafening sound.
“I ask again, bastard!” the executioner shouted. “Name the passenger stats! Stats!”
He wanted to whip and raised his hand.
The agitated and trembling Cyanotic made a circular motion with his hands, snapped his fingers, and the picture of what was happening slowed down noticeably. However, the person who jumped out of the portal moved very quickly. His movements were precise, verified, and perfect. While still in the air, he was already unwinding his body, like a water acrobat, although there was no water there. Before touching the floor, the man cut the executioner into two parts, and by inertia at the turn, he destroyed everyone in his path with the help of two frightening power swords. The man stopped and straightened up. There was no one else to kill. His face was young and, oddly enough, very calm. In the upper frame was listed:
Yar Solid, level 728
Universal Wizard
Specialization: Portals
Chapter 57. Deal
T his information was bewildering. Did it really happen? The head of the Syndicate missed how it all was over.
“Does anyone understand anything? How is it even possible that the man destroyed our high-level gangsters in a matter of mere moments, eh? Kuks had a much higher level! What the hell?”
The head of the Syndicate was confused and stunned. However, that was the same as all the bandits present, except Cyanotic who was unconscious with white foam on his lips.
“Sir, maybe he will explain something? Eott obviously knows a lot,” one of the guards said.
The head carefully looked at one of his best guards, as if seeing him for the first time, and ordered, “Bring him to his senses.”
They had to pour three buckets of cold water on the sorcerer. Finally, he woke up. Eott was shivering from the cold water taken from a glacier.
He seemed to know what was happening and so he spoke very confidently, loudly and clearly.
“I understand what interests you. I am also very annoyed; it turns out that the frame can be edited. Lately, a lot of unexplainable things have happened in the Belt of the Worlds. I have already uttered an oath to the light elves, and, as I understand it, I still have to oath to Syndicate. This is my limit; I cannot say anything more. Perhaps Syndicate needs to look at the event in more detail and listen to me carefully, then maybe everything will become clear. If I were you, I would be in a hurry.”
The Syndicate head sighed, rubbing his forehead. Eott seems to be right. What is happening there?
Outside the torture room, there were some shouts, swearing, and insults.
“Security!” the head shouted. “What’s going on?”
A huge guard barely squeezed through the doorway, holding a small frightened little man.
“Sir, Louse says that Kuks, the pretender, is dead.”
“Sir! Sir!” the little man squealed. “I witnessed it personally as Kuks, the pretender, passed away.”
“Put him on his feet, and let him speak. Louse, report calmly and in detail what you know. Don’t squeal or you will die, here and now.”
Louse took a deep breath and spoke in a surprisingly well-articulated voice full of expression and emotion. “Sir, as usual, I rushed to the watcher with a wallet from the pickpockets of the third sector—there were three gold and twelve silver coins. When I approached, I saw that Kuks had broken up into weightless motes, carried away on the wind. The watcher disappeared, and his remnants were dispelled like a cloud. The guards and I were scared, and so we rushed to his point of rebirth, but he was not there. Several times we rushed back and forth, but he had disappeared. Kuks never left his place; he had been sitting in the square for ages. Therefore, I ran to the archivist, Pim Pettifogger, and I helped him flip through the books personally. My worst fears were confirmed—Kuks, the pretender, is not listed on any registry. He has disappeared from all documents of the organization!”
Cyanotic broke the oppressive silence by raising his long index finger instructively. “This is another clue and confirmation.”
Eott Cyanotic then swore an oath, received his money for the first session, and left Syndicate.
The thugs were still discouraged.
“Is that really true? We had a clash with the crowned head of the underworld,” the head of Syndicate uttered sullenly. “Apparently, Kuks cast the Define Invisible spell and was punished for it. Kuks’ death confirms that the system is not on our side. We are perpetrators.”
The head was angry and ordered decisively, “I announce total alarm. We have to find a young, handsome and, damn it, very lucky, Yar Solid of the seven hundred twenty-eighth level. Pay special attention to hotels, bars, and restaurants. He had to have stayed the night somewhere. I will give a million gold coins to the one who finds Yar first!”
***
Famous shipbuilders of the main Imperial port, who were enthusiastically building a yacht for a rich man, did not even suspect that something very interesting was happening above them, somewhere up on the roof, among unnecessary trimmings and rubbish.
“Hey, Aire, come on. If you want, just tell me. I’ll buy you a few portal cabins. Don’t look at me like that. Just say the word. You’re healthier now than before. Don’t worry, life is getting better.”
Finally, the portaler croaked, “They were the members of Syndicate and their reverse tower. Nobody comes out of it, do you understand? You ... you killed them all, one universal wizard with a level of seven hundred fought against the famous gangsters. Even a child understands that this is impossible. You have strange healing magic; I’ve never heard of it before. Why do you need me, sir?” He looked at Yar inquiringly.
“Well, yes, I’m sorry. And it’s true. I know it looks silly.” Yar showed real data in the hit bar. “Now there are no secrets.”
Yar noted that this change seemed to make the guy feel better right away.
“It’s clear,” the portaler answered shortly and cheerfully. “They say a lot about the gentleman in the capital. Why do you need me?”
Aire Ant had mastered things surprisingly quickly, and so Yar nodded.
“Yes, that’s right, Ant. If I can say so cynically, I need you because you have a talent for ‘Seeing the Essence’. This is a very useful skill. I was lucky to meet you on my way.”
“I believe you, Yar Row Dark. Will you help me level-up my hidden specialization and take me to the Midnighters clan? There are billions of requests to join your clan.”
Yar laughed.
“Of course. Please apply to join the clan.”
“I don’t know how it will be implemented, but I agree to everything.” The portaler then hesitated for a brief moment—apparently, he was composing a document.
“Well, Ant. I will give you three thousand five hundred points of characteristics. If you can invest a thousand points in Intelligence and Perception, I think this will be en
ough to manifest the necessary specialization. Put one thousand more into the Seeing Essence, and then the remaining five hundred wherever you want. Also, I congratulate you; you are now in the Midnighters clan. Stay here. I don’t want to endanger you anymore. I need to settle something; I think it will take a few hours. Work thoughtfully with your stats. I need a little time to deal with a situation.”
The guy was stunned to see three and a half thousand unused characteristic points in his articles.
He said, “Are we going to capture the Tix?”
Yar laughed again. “No, not now. I need to graduate from the academy.” The clan leader patted the portaler on the shoulder. “Don’t ask why I need this Dark Academy. After you level-up, believe me, this question will disappear all by itself.”
***
Coming out of the portal on the square, Yar immediately headed for the yellow giant Wasp Castle. Coming closer, he realized that this castle was as big as Ryiri. He admired the beautiful building. There were contrasting black towers and turrets, numerous green terraces, and even surrounding man-made lakes.
There must be a breathtaking view from there, Yar thought, heading for the main entrance. He always thought that he had an idea of the luxury of hotels (most of which he had seen in movies), of course, but he never expected such brilliance as that which greeted him in the hall. Even the most insignificant thing seemed to be a highly artistic jewel.
He didn’t have time to step, as a pleasant smiling girl approached him, bowing courteously.
“Does the master want to dine, unwind, move into an apartment, or perhaps something else?”
It’s nice. Just everything I need.
“I would like to have dinner and move into an apartment; I would also like to talk to the manager.”
The girl beamed again and bowed gracefully, like a ballerina in a theater.
‘While our most distinguished guest enjoys the best cuisine in the capital, we will prepare apartments for you to choose from and summon the manager. Sir, can I take you to your table?”
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