Web of light. Part 1. part 29

Fuguruma bowed to me, bending her slender waist, and I thought: two years...

"Tell me, Before, my grandfather... Did he leave Noikhara in the spring or in the summer?"

"In the summer..."

The Social Committee worked quickly — my birthday is in the first half of June...

"..It was August 29, 2005."

"What?"

Chapter 135

Every time I learn something new about my relatives, I admire their kindness and affectionate treatment of me! However, perhaps I'm talking nonsense and grandfather didn't fake his death out of a good life, but in some way protecting me? It sounds like a phrase from a Brazilian TV series, but it just doesn't happen in real life... passed. Let's go for now.

"Do, Ginko, Kaya, let me introduce you to my vassals: Kashi and Mizuchi."

By the way, while I was actively conducting diplomacy, the Corpse Eater and Shizuka were carefully cleaning up next to me, "sorting out the targets." Even now, they relaxed a little, but they continued to closely monitor the situation in the courtyard, standing so as not to block the strelok's sector of fire. Do bowed gravely in response to the silent bow of my bodyguards, and I waved towards the house.

"Dofu, do you know if there were any other items in the hidden besides you? I'm interested in records and amulets."

"Yes, besides the armory bank, I keep the clan's archive books. Would you like to read it right now, Amakawa-dono?"

"No, let's go inside." if I remember the storage method correctly, then I'm about to see the sacred process that students so often promise during exam preparation. Simply put, it will literally "make me sick of knowledge," and I don't really want to pick it up from the ground! "Ginko... Um, Ginko, I don't want to interrupt you, but maybe we can move into the living room and have some tea?"

In response, I received a joyful inarticulate squeal, and the werewolf galloped into the house. Dofu majestically (and in her dress it's problematic to do otherwise) strode past the almost calmed-down Zashiki-varashi, followed by our three, but as it turned out, the brownie had her own opinion about our stay at the estate: In response, I received a joyful inarticulate squeal, and the werewolf galloped into the house.

"I didn't let you in!" The girl jumped up, blocking my way and grabbing a kitchen chopping knife from somewhere in her sleeve. It was... somewhat unexpectedly... For me, but not for my vassals! There's a loud, dry click and a whistle, and the steel blade crumbles like glass, and at the same moment a heavy dark body carries yokai away, pinning her to the ground, and Mizuchi is already putting an ice spear to the fool's throat. What teeth Kashi has in animal form! And the "keeper of the hearth" Amakawa has such pure surprise on her face that there is not even room for fear. I'm doing great! That's what it means to properly wind up subordinates and scare them a little. Kashi didn't just block the quarrelsome spirit, he threw it away from the walls of the building, severing the energy interconnection of the two parts of the spirit's body. The hawk-nosed one is also an eagle! True, he had a good chance to shoot off Kaya's hand, but apparently he was not embarrassed. Or was he aiming at his hand? I'll have to ask later...

Saying, "Rinko, Shin, stay in position," I approached the well-fixed "patient" and, with difficulty suppressing the idiotic inappropriate desire to touch the "smile" of the leader of the spirits of the "Amakawa group" (The entire jaw is fangs with a triangular edge the size of two of my palms! S-s-s! Okay, hands off!), I squatted down next to the remaining free head of the spirit of the House and tried to appeal to the voice of reason:

"And what was that?"

But I was maliciously ignored, Zashiki-varashi was more interested in the transparent-sharp blade of Mizuchi's spear tip and Kashi and Mizuchi themselves.

"Stro-o-ong ones... How strong you are!"

"Don't pay any attention to Kaya, Amakawa-sama. She is not capable of harming Gennosuke's grandson." Do, who turned around at the noise, informed me. "She only obeyed your grandfather and Himari normally. Please forgive us for her behavior, Master."

"I see," I waved my palm in front of the prisoner of Kashi's face, "hey, I'm here!"

"You won't dare enter the house until you bring Himari! Got it?! Ouch!" It was Shizuka who calmly stabbed yokai in the neck with her ice cube, and Kashi quietly and intelligently clicked his jaws. Well, yes, a serious case.

And then it dawned on me. Come on... Holy shit!!!

Since the house and everything around it was pretty clogged with the light lines of the Ferry, I turned off the "special vision" immediately after activating the opener amulet. An unnecessary delay in reaction caused by a loss of orientation in the light mix around could be fatal. And now I've resorted to "eyes" again. And I saw it. The brownie's body was thoroughly "patched", and most of the body was occupied by concentric circles, very similar in structure to my "magical superconductor". If you looked through your glasses like this, almost point-blank, you could see that the mana glow was just on this one... An energy trap? Or rather, a transformer. Yeah, here are the radial channels with the same structure — the capacity of the body has been increased significantly. And this... I couldn't help but swear! Well, that makes sense. To use a lot of energy at once, the nervous system must also withstand the flow. She could stand it... due to the degradation of half of the analytical links! And at the same time, she speaks more or less coherently and even acts with some logic, albeit flawed, even naive, but she acts! What did the ever-memorable Himari say? "I am a sword, I am a shadow"? Zashiki-varashi could rightfully say "I am the shield of the house of Amakawa" — it was for this function that her Ferry of Light was "sharpened".

How lovely. With an "ordinary" spirit, and not the spirit of the place, such a trick will not work — this is the connection of bodies. The connection between the old building and Kai's body provided a frenzied waterfall of energy, which I observed at the very beginning of our meeting... But with an ordinary spirit, it is quite possible to create another trick: to tie, for example, reaction speed and reflexes, so that in battle the brains turn off and allow you to knock everyone down right and left. By the way, I can do that, too, it's not such a complicated procedure. We just need to figure out what the Ferry to the peripheral nervous pathways looks like... Damn it! damn it!!!

"Let her go," I ordered Kashi in a flat voice, and without waiting for the brownie to come to her senses, I picked her up in my arms. Well, what about it? She's as tall as me even now, when I'm only eleven, and even lighter than Shizuka... and no one canceled the Ferry to strengthen the muscles.

"Uh-uh-hey! What are you doing?!" the girl who received a major break in the template quickly blushed and began to stutter. "Let me go!"

"My grandfather... Amakawa Gennosuke, he's the one for you..." The words "made like that" stuck in my throat, and I clumsily finished: "..Did he raise you?"

Wow! Kaya literally shrank in my arms, a shadow of long-standing fear and pain darted in her eyes.

"Y-yes..." she managed faintly.

"Was Himari in the same band with you back then? Were you "raised" together?" I changed an overly complicated construction into simple words.

There was a convulsive nod in response.

"And how many of you were there?" I whispered very softly. And he heard it just as quietly:

"Seven of them..."

In the living room of the house, I lowered Kaya onto the sofa, motioned for Dofu to be quiet, and called into the headset:

"Rinko, Shin, it's all settled, come over."

"Accepted!"

While Kuzaki and Hawk-Nose were walking towards the house, I quickly looked at the wolf and the envelope spirit for an unusual Ferry, but I saw only the standard Amakawa Oath lines. Ginko was an enthusiastic, frivolous fool solely on her own.

"Everyone, one moment's attention," I asked as soon as everyone had gathered. "My word is the word of the head of the Amakawa clan." Yuto called them to witness. Yuto swore that neither he nor his descendants would EVER let you be hurt if it was in their power, "Zashiki-varashi Kaya."

And not "for the record" he added:

"And I'll find Himari. Wherever she is. She's my friend too."

"i-i-i.. Don't t-try to suck up to me, I h-h-hate you anyway! Here!" Kaya jumped up and ran somewhere inside the house.

"And what was that?" Rinko pulled off her protective helmet and was the first to break the long silence.

"Giving away old debts," I replied, matching her tone, "which I didn't even know about."

"You found a couple of skeletons in the closet, you know?" Mizuchi asked, smiling sadly.

"Rather, this one fell out when I opened the gate of the family home," It's not funny, I joked, with a hint.

"Now you're among them... That's all. Don't get dirty, Yuto Amakawa."

"Don't worry, Shizuka. The Europeans have a wonderful saying, you'll love it.: "The king's entourage is playing." I hope there are no complaints about the choice of the retinue?"

"No problem," the Goddess of Rivers assured me with a serious look, "especially in light of your promise, you know."

"Yes, you did a great job today, well done!"

"But of course! But I'm actually talking about something else: someone here just promised for their descendants, who don't exist yet. So you've picked up an excellent "entourage" for yourself!"

"Oh," I finally realized which way Mizuchi was pushing, but I decided to keep up the joke, "And you approve of them all? Hopefully, the rest of us think the same way you do."

"Don't worry, I'll tell everyone that in a dream you're warm and soft and there's enough room for two at once. And Rinko will confirm it."

"I don't understand what you're talking about at all!!!" Kuzaki, who was red to a glow, turned away from us. And Kashi and Hawk-Nosed must have had a coughing fit. Even Do snorted faintly.

"Ginko made tea! For the host and the guests! Everyone go to the kitchen!" The restless she-wolf stormed into the room, and grabbing my hand, dragged me along. And it's not as unpleasant, this old house, as I thought about it just twenty-four hours ago. It was just necessary to add a drop of humanity... or non-human warmth. Okay, let's assume that I've recaptured the house and a couple of old new allies. Now I urgently need to go through the records from Before and try to figure out what happened here a couple of years ago, which I have literally a day, two at most... And why is Shinji sitting there with such a long face?

"Patchi called," he answered my unspoken question, "The Mutual Aid group has recruited volunteers."

"Is something wrong with the plan? Less than a dozen?"

"Yes. And no... shortly.. There are 169 of them!"

Oh, kami! What's going on in Takamiya?!

Chapter 136.

After a bit of thought, I decided not to whip up a fever, but to talk to Hiroe so that she could go after school and figure out what was going on in the "Squad". After all, she was going to start recruiting herself in the future, and this was a great opportunity to practice. In the meantime, I'll deal with those documents that are better not to take out of a secure house... At least you can't take it outside the Dofu. Where is the workplace of the good grandpa Gena?

I can only say one thing about the clan head's office: extreme austerity. It was just an empty room, a low desk that was supposed to be sitting on the floor, a few simple brushes with lacquered pens, and ink. I found a stack of paper in a special drawer under the table. That's it! I even had to plug in an electrical outlet in the next room, bringing an extension cord: my VAIO P, despite the black color of the case, looked like an incongruous festive box. I needed a laptop to take notes, and we decided to leave Noihara the next day, and I planned to spend the next day studying the archive of the Amakawa clan. The one I kept before.

Speaking of Before. The opinion of the girl as a "weak" yokai, based on observing the power of the aura and on memories of the manga, to put it mildly, did not correspond to reality. Having got my hands on twenty-two thick volumes in wooden (!!!) I was completely stunned when I asked her how many books like these she could carry if she filled them to the maximum, and I was even more stunned. Three tons of cargo! "And if you decide to roll a barrel on it, then it's not for me anymore, it's already container shipping! (C)" All sorts of thoughts immediately popped into my head, like driving Dofu to Argentina once, for valuable plant raw materials, and I wouldn't have to look for investors for the "Water Industry". And then fuck working hard and picking up all the little things from the bottom! Shaking my head and dispelling thoughts of easy money, I made a note on the calendar: to make a list of those abilities of my vassals, which it is better for outsiders not to know about in any case. Actually, the idea of smuggling is also worth writing down — after all, Japan is an island, and I have three beautifully floating water yokai at hand. The only thing you need to carry is for yourself, because it's too easy to get burned... and because there is a wonderful Kagamimori clan that knows how to seal different things into other things, and something tells me that I can specifically fit into their niche. By the way, priests can use all sorts of "substances" in their work, and if so, why not import excess for sale...

OKAY, STOP! Enough conspiracy theory. I'll think about it when I'm not pressed for time, like on a train. And now — the archive! I pulled over a thick handwritten book with a carefully written letter "1" on the cover and opened it to the first page...

Have you read the Gospel of John? Well, the one that "Abraham begat Isaac"? The books were somewhat more detailed biographies of my distant ancestors. About fifty years ago, and even less in recent books. It took me a moment to realize that I, Yuto Amakawa, could trace my ancestry back over seven hundred years! Seven hundred! Mother, mother, mother! I couldn't even imagine which pyramid of my past lives I was living on. Of course, everyone can say that about themselves... but not everyone can find out specifically and by name! I didn't know all the hieroglyphs, but the books were quite readable, and the further I read, the more the epic canvas of the exorcist clan's life in the medieval Island Empire unfolded in front of me. For the stingy ones, "he was born", "married at the age of fifteen", "died by crushing a man-eating spirit", "created an amulet...", "commanded the cavalry of a samurai of the Ryu family", "cured", "poisoned and was executed", "fought a sea monster with Tsuchimikado", "fell in the fight with Yakoin, the reward is paid," there was such a series of events, passions and blood that it took my breath away. There were no amulet recipes or spell descriptions in the archive. There were no sketches of the clan ability. At most, it was possible to find out the name of the invented technique or a brief specification of the amulet. Among my ancestors were swordsmen, including those of a level that trained the same Yakoin (just ten years after the murder), and doctors, and politicians, even a diplomat signed up. At one time, the Amakawa traded in wood, at another they mined building stone, escorted ships of one trading company for fifty years, and then sank them all in one go — a conflict of interest occurred.