* * *
For some time, Igor sincerely fought the desire to put his loot on the shelf and look at it, from time to time, enjoying his coolness. Alas, his brain won in the struggle between common sense and the desire to show off, once again proving that Igor is a very base individual. Instead of a shelf, he hid his share for the past massacre under the floorboard: four Tiny Marks and two Small Marks, one Bone Lantern. No one wanted to take Lanterns because of the problems he described with using the ritual Tablets. And also his polyhedron. Then, however, it dawned on him that the Shroud actively hid his Vessels only if he carried it. So he had to take out the floorboard again, take the valuables, and hide the rest.
The next couple of days, he spent mostly recovering from the carnage he had endured. He performed the Frigile Vessel ritual twice more, focusing on his life force, finally getting rid of the bruise and cracks in his ribs. He was afraid that they would heal incorrectly, but they did not. The body, improved by the almost closed Step, seemed to be trying to get back to its best condition, so Igor could only refrain from interfering with the body's recovery. Yes, the body became not just stronger or more resilient, no, it was as if he was improving on some other level. He began to understand and think faster, even though the intelligence characteristic was absent in his status list. Yes, it is difficult to calculate the level of your own ICQ, especially if you throw all sorts of tests out of the equation. In the end, an intelligence test only shows how well you can pass said test.
But the result was obvious and undeniable. Reading and information processing speed increased, and memory improved significantly, to the point that one could pass a poem by heart after the first reading. He did not become smarter, no, but he began to use his existing brains, experience, intuition, and erudition much better. Physical characteristics also grew. It was easier to calculate them purely mathematically. Exercises became easier; gymnastics improved; flexibility, strength, and endurance obviously increased. Changes in appearance also continued, although not in geometric progression, and those changes accumulated. The spots on the skin finally disappeared, the hair became slightly thicker and smoother, despite the long-absent haircut, and facial features sharpened and softened at the same time.
No elven beauty, not even the level of a supermodel, but the result was noticeable, as was the increased physical fitness. No, not Superman, not Steve Rogers, and not Lex Luthor, but the same Igor. Only an improved version of him. But this is only the zero Step, almost filled; there are still many, many more steps ahead of those. Fortunately, the increase in "charisma" was best seen not in Igor but in Vasily, simply due to the low base. It is enough to simply change into fresh clothes provided by Zhenya, wash off the dirt, and slightly comb his beard, so that from a scary and smelly homeless person, he becomes a homeless, but charismatic one. And so ... under normal conditions, he could say that he simply began to take better care of himself and went in for sports; no one would doubt it. If they start looking for the Exalted on a large scale and systematically, based on indirect signs, they may not believe him.
Regular training of the Tablet also brought results. The last battle had brought a lot of results. Thanks to the Gift, it was possible to pick out the important from the fleeting moments. The sand-clay attack on Zhenya was the first time the protection had repelled both physical and magical attacks, and a smart one, capable of targeting the target and independently climbing into her airways. And the protection did it, but the way the attack of the freak worked and the way the protection countered it, the thoughts of how to improve the defense, and how the shot maniac could improve his attack.... This alone gave him a trio of ones to his understanding, and that wasn't the most memorable moment of the fight. On the fourth day after the battle, Igor brought his protection almost to its peak, one step away from completing the comprehension scale of his main Tablet.
Alas, this little step seemed to require a much stronger investment of labor, brains, and imagination than the two-thirds scale before it. On the one hand, it frustrated him that there wasn't the typical experience filler bar, where each facet was worth exactly the same amount as the previous one. On the other hand, it slightly improved his mood, as for the rest of the Exalted, his problems were ridiculous since it was not an option for them to progress at this rate. Even his companions, who were getting some sort of increase from being in the same squad as him, boasted to Igor that they would soon reach fifty units of understanding on the main Tablets. Soon. If they kept up the pace. At that moment, Igor clearly felt that he didn't want to share his problems with either Zhenya or Vas-Vas, or they might punch him in the face.
The other two Tablets also grew, and the ritual grew even faster than the last two. It was a result of the already existing experience, which allowed one to notice regularities and similarities of separate arcane knowledge, to connect revelations, using the already known as fuel for a fire, which would light up the unknown. The mosaic structure of the Tablet also had an effect, which gave more freedom and allowed experimentation with different forms of application. Igor came to the conclusion that spirit Tablets should be developed more in direct combat or active use, while bone rituals increased understanding, even from trivial thinking about new forms and tricks. Igor was sure that he could try to develop the bowl, if not to a hundred, then to a new effect, without ever using the ritual itself, solely analyzing the structure of the mosaic and its possibilities in his head and soul.
Minor Protective Charm: 99/100
Minor Combat Shine: 96/100
Light Touch of Primordial Powers: Grant Fragile Chalice and Bodily Might: 37/100
He would have to finish with the Protective Cham, and then the Combat Shine would not be far from complete, which may well be followed by the evolution of the Tablet, its gaining new heights. Well, so suggests intuition and images-descriptions of one of Igor's gifts. That's what he thinks, lazily looking out the dark window, where even the lampposts are not visible behind the blizzard that lasts and lasts. The snowfall of the last few days is not just stormy. It's breaking all kinds of records, and utilities are scrambling to even clear downtown roads and fix power lines. The light outages have not occurred by miracle, but rather due to the profound swearing of utility workers. In a city panicked and flooded by a growing number of critters, only the power outages and the supply of basic necessities were not enough for complete happiness.
In general, in this winter cold, there was no time for walks and searching for the truth, so Igor wouldn't have been surprised if their recent raid on the Sculptor had remained completely unknown to anyone. Snow had piled up in some places as high as a man's height, roofs were broken in many places, pipes and other infrastructure were failing, and here were some missing men at their dacha. Eugene also temporarily quieted down. According to him, he hadn't even met Vasily. He just couldn't find him in such a blizzard. The homeless one was probably sleeping in some snowdrift again, taking advantage of his complete invulnerability to weather conditions and drinking vodka by the bucketful. So all Igor could do was to train and follow the news, which was not only interesting in his hometown.
For starters, for example, the weather anomaly was exactly around his small homeland. At a distance of fifty kilometers from the borders of the city, the weather is winter, but completely normal. And within this radius, the most insane weather conditions are only within the building, and even in the nearest kilometers from it. The whole world would have already trumpeted about the weather anomaly and the coming end of the world, although it would have trumpeted, if not for the fact that this was not the only place of special weather nastiness. A town in Norway, which had recently made the news, was also suffering from a cold and snowy winter, so cold and snowy that it was exactly the same as the one Igor was experiencing outside his window. However, the inhabitants there did not whine about it, as they had been forcibly and in a very organized manner evacuated due to the extreme weather and crime situation.
The army occupied that town, and not only the Norwegian army. Half of NATO had units there, and the U.S. contingent was growing, bringing in heavy vehicles and aircraft. Of course, the official version referred to sudden exercises and all that, but it was hard to believe. They were shooting there, as it seemed, really often, and also pictures of an armored personnel carrier M117, opened and almost turned inside out by an unknown shell, leaked into the network. It looked as if the armor had been torn by huge claws. But there are no such animals, despite the attempts of network bots to prove that it was just a big grizzly bear that escaped from the zoo, and defective steel, no other way.
There was also a town in Mexico, not too big either, a hundred thousand population, not quite a hundred thousand. The weather there also went crazy, bringing increasing heat and regular dust storms. Cartel warfare was going on in those storms, and corpses were found regularly. Who else but the cartels would mutilate those corpses like that, huh? Rumors that all the drug dealers had either laid low long ago or had decided to leave the city while it was being abandoned were probably an exaggeration. Just like the increased swampiness of another city in the United States, the one in Maine. The fogs there were particularly persistent, cold, and wicked, albeit without snow. Complete doldrums, growing water level, and huge problems with water supply, as well as missing people and an uncovered cell of some terrorists, who were blamed for the casualties. And yes, also troops and still only planned evacuation, American citizens were too used to having their rights respected, and they couldn't keep quiet. And there were more of them than Norwegians.
Africa was marked by a large-scale dust storm around a town. There were similar cases in India and China, and in one of the prefectures of Japan, a weekly large-scale fog was observed, even thicker than in the United States, but without swamps. Everywhere were towns, small and relatively remote from other populated areas. Everywhere there were weather anomalies of different kinds, which struck almost synchronously, although the Norwegians were ahead of the world here, ahead of the rest of the world for a week at least. However, as Igor had noted before, his small homeland was ahead of the rest of the world by a huge margin. Half a million inhabitants, and all in one huge ice pit with predatory creatures.
The more Igor reads, the more he realizes that his city was very unlucky. Or Igor was lucky. His city seemed to be the largest among all the dispersal points of those glowing orbs that initiated the newly minted Exalted. That's why there's no reaction. Two or three dozen corpses in a town of thirty thousand people, and in a country with one of the lowest crime rates, to put it mildly, cause a stir. In a large city of five hundred thousand people, too, but not so active, not so instantaneous. On the other hand, patrols with machine guns are already roaming around, even in this weather, and their uniforms are no longer police uniforms, but green. And the mandatory evacuation is also coming. Igor is sure of it. They are making very characteristic speeches on TV. The only difference is that the reason for the evacuation is not the packs of dogs that are naturally eating up the outskirts of the city and tore even soldiers who tried to shoot at them into meat, not the piles of corpses, incomprehensible bullshit, and frankly mystical incidents. No, it's just bad weather in the city. That's why they're taking you citizens, out.
T.N. The green uniform is the army.