Ink went mad with rage and rushed forward. Around him soared invisible threads, with a small semblance of sickles at the ends. They gnawed at the demon's mind. The monster growled, a "blot" splashed in drops of the color of red-hot lava. From the burning pain all Ink's thoughts disappeared, he saw nothing but the enemy. A cry of rage burst from the throat and he was echoed by a monster drowning all the roar.

The monster has fallen. Ink knew there should be more. He rushed forward, but something was in the way. Chains? Vines plants?

- ... uh! ... vi ... - belatedly came the understanding of the words breaking through the ringing in the ears - "No! Stop! "

Behind him, female arms hugged him, did not allow him to rush into a suicide attack on the next demon, which appeared at the intersection.

"Rowne!"

Ink turned his head. Anxious Arsi opened her mouth, but he heard only parts of her mental speech. Even the voice of reason could not break through to his consciousness completely. The girl continued to say something. Ink even roughly understood the meaning of the message. The monsters are strong. Arsi called them supreme demons. There was something about destroying his mind. Ink remembered his weapon of mind - embodied regret.

"Emotions. Strong, bright. They determine our attitude to various things. Negative emotions are even stronger than happy ones. Does this mean that a person is a sculpture carved from a shapeless mass with pain and regrets? Is it really bad to get rid of sickles? "

Ink's eyes didn't leave Rowan's corpse. Empty eyes and pallor ... that unnatural color that distinguishes the dead from the living. The remnants of her light merged with his thread of consciousness and are now rooted in the body of the animal.

Rage disappeared somewhere. There was only a feeling of fatigue and bitterness. Ink held a container of slime with one hand and hugged Arsi with the other . He imagined Rown and mentally apologized to her for not saving. For not being able to fulfill his promise.

When Ink came to his senses a bit, Kiass a and Grank a noticed . The descendant of the gods stood proudly. His eyes carefully examined the surroundings. He was ready to join the battle at any moment. Alchemist looked at Ink and. A complex expression froze on his face.

"Well, yes ... He probably thinks that I saved his life by diving into that slime. In a way, it is, but ... Where does this feeling of worthlessness come from? "

Ink clenched his fist and tried to calm down. He nodded to Kiass , and received a slightly late gesture in response.

"Follow me," Arsi 's thoughtful voice sounded confident, as if she had always said just that.

Together they came to those people who courted Arsi before.

The big house had enough light to disperse the shadows without a trace, and enough room to accommodate all of Glam's students. Left alone, Ink tried to escape. The dull pain inside, drove away thoughts, deprived the desire to act.

The pebble in his hand was still saturated with a force field.

"Why am I suffering? Who is she to me? Just a random girl who offered the body in exchange for an escape from this world? We do not even know each other. How many people in the zero world die of hunger and cold every day? I do not care about them! Rowne? She went! Why do I have to suffer because of the death of some ... some ... ", - Ink convinced himself mentally of the futility of this torment.

It turned out badly.

Ink curled up in an embryo pose on his bed and turned away from the mucus container on the table. He put a stone on his forehead, impregnation with a force field accelerated. He tried to rejoice at it ... Reason, as if in a mockery, again showed the face of the dying Rown. Not a sound from the outside world was reflected in his ears, but the girl's prayer was repeated like a looped record: "Save my people".

Something fluttered in the stone attached to his forehead. Ink instinctively threw him away and jumped up in bed. In the middle of the path to the wall, a thin bright red thread flew out of stone. She slipped between trying to grab her fingers and went right between Ink a. It was like a needle prick. A thread of blood leaked on.

A small, dim amoeba invaded Ink's mind. Sickles tried to crash into the remnants of someone else's consciousness, and then broke up into the smallest sand. The strands of reason hissed as they ran into the web of minds of demons, but this time it was like trying to hit a piece of steel with a tuft of hair.

The remainder of the consciousness of God attached himself in the right place. Svetochik Ink was trembling, trying to get rid of a dangerous intruder. The environment was changing. Consciousness went through layer after layer of the world of the mind, until it plunged into darkness, diluted with several luminous sparks. The rest of God's mind quivered. Ink tried to move him and succeeded. "Amoeba" smoothly sailed to the side.

Good... Ink thought relieved . His attention was attracted by a thin thread between him and a piece of the mind of God. "Where did she come from?"

The attempt to break the connection failed. "Amoeba" flinched a couple of times and abruptly rushed to the corpse of the energy creation. When, after a couple of moments, the creature stirred, Ink's blood went cold. A small semblance of a dinosaur turned slightly lit golden inside and pressed his paws to his stomach.

For the first time in this dark world, Ink heard the beat of his heart. The energy creature began to pulsate with it rhythmically with it. Nothing else happened. Ink did not know whether to be happy or sad. He returned to the small world and created a mirror from the force field. A reflection was visible between the eyebrows. Thin red lines folded into a triple spiral. The fingers did not feel the difference with another part of the skin, as if it were a common illusion.

The spirals finally stopped expanding, and their ends turned around in a circle. Now the figure was enclosed in a circle.

Ink touched him with a thread of consciousness and his mind was drawn into a void with flickering groups of letters. The "handwriting" was different from the fact that he was in the grimoire of the archdemon, and the clusters themselves were much larger.

"Perhaps one of them has an explanation?"

All clusters of letters had little accompaniment. Like the moon near the earth, they sailed a short distance. Ink touched a small set of characters. Information flowed into his mind about the method of strengthening the light. A small group of words told about the basic requirements for the practice and the prospects for its use, safety warnings. The method itself had to be searched in a large cluster of characters nearby.

The second group contained the method of combat with the thread of the mind. Having mastered it, it was possible to turn thought into a weapon.

The third described the technique for the proper assimilation of a drop of God's blood. Thanks to this, it was possible to significantly strengthen the eyes and go on to study the methods of their combat and non-combat use.

These methods themselves were in the fifth cluster, and in the fourth Ink saw a description of the art of combat without weapons. The rest of the letters promised to talk about the method of developing subtle bodies according to the principles of the School of the demonic god of the Triple Whirlwind, the technique of strengthening the body with the threads of consciousness, the technique of accelerating perception, the secret method of the eye of the storm for accumulating energy reserves in it, as well as the cinema. The most important thing now was the contents of the last cluster, in which an unknown god left detailed information on how to leave the small world he had created. Ink immediately touched a large cluster.

In this small world there was a kind of "heart" that controlled the laws and boundaries of a limited space. It was possible to give him an order with the help of the voice of consciousness, but only using the technique was allowed only with a light. The heart of the world will catch such a signal, but an outsider will not. An unknown god left a warning in the message. The owner of his legacy may be killed due to greed. You can track the vibrations of the strand of the mind, but its focus was hidden in a natural defense. The list of commands indicated several entry points. The pyramid from the throne served as a beacon to open the gate here from the zero world.

One of the teams opened the membrane of the sky. An unknown god said that you can lure your enemies into a small world, escape outside and open the membrane. This will lead to the death of all animals and plants in a small world. Also in this block of information it was reported that the school of the demonic god of the triple vortex is beyond the boundaries of the stars of the zero world. An unknown god called not to be afraid of his mark of reason, since it would not harm, but was a distinctive sign of the personal student of the founder of the doctrine. The limited number of techniques was explained by the impossibility of using many techniques in conditions of limited resources of the zero world.

"Find the school of the demonic god of the Triple Whirlwind beyond the stars. You will be accepted as the main student and provided with the best resources and secret techniques. If you can get to the seventh world and find me or my followers, then you deserve the best attitude. It is easy to grow a strong tree on fertile soil, but only geniuses from geniuses survive in the barren desert. Prove that you are one of them. "

If it were a little earlier, Ink would have believed in the good intentions of the unknown god. After a conversation with the archdemon, he was visited by a more mundane thought. Someone needs "biomaterial".

"The only thing that comes to mind is the eye technique. If the right eyes are very difficult to develop, then it makes sense to leave the bait in a zero world. Passing through fiery baptism when sent to the first world can remake the body and make it natural, Ink reasoned . "Why not immediately send someone here for this purpose?" Is this school founder the same as Gran's parents ? Not at odds with magicians and clans? "

Ink left the world of tag. The slightest trace of the mark was no longer visible in the reflection of the force.

The mucus container was a silent reproach. Ink felt a little relieved that he could still fulfill the promise made by Rowhn. He again went to the world of tags. The words about Keenra were completely different than in the brochures. No division into steps - only information about the layers of the mind and their purpose.

The blood of the demonic god indicated detailed instructions on how to get into one or another layer. Warnings helped to avoid pitfalls when immersed in yourself. Ink did not believe in the kindness of the demonic god, but he considered the instructions that were left reliable. In the end, the demonic god needed him to live long enough to find his school.

Squeeze the lamp and damp its light, scatter thin threads to the sides and start a slight rotation. Such a simple method allowed Ink to "sift through" the space of a glass-like mind through a sieve of consciousness. The threads could not pass everywhere, stumbled upon obstacles from which transparent pebbles of various shapes gradually formed.

This is how the acquired skills looked like here. And several of them differed in style from the rest.

"Finally I found you, gifts of the spirit of reflection."