Web of light. Part 1-7. part 27

"I like to do several things at the same time," The girl with the haircut smiled flatteringly, and I returned to studying the document."

No, nothing like that, just a simple printout of the terms of reference from the government-accredited contracting portal. You know, when a private contractor is needed to do something that the authorities don't have the manpower, equipment, or just stupid time to do. Here, too, there was a similar outfit order: everything is simple and unpretentious. It was necessary to clean the bottom of large rock fragments throughout the water area to ensure the safety of local coastal and fishing navigation. It's not the easiest task, but it's not that rare either, after all, we live in an archipelago. The difference between this particular government order was in the location of the work. Exactly where the underwater island of Spirits now rests. How lovely! I especially like the amount with eight zeros that you can get for this job. No, I understand everything — renting a seaworthy barge or a special trawler for lifting heavy stones weighing up to several tons, and there are hundreds of stones, and the weather at sea is a capricious thing. Shallow depths, strong currents, tides, in short, I understand that the tender has been hanging for many years. I'm surprised that the residents of the coastal villages even pushed through these works in the prefecture. Apparently, the lack of sea communication with limited land-based road infrastructure prevents the normal development of this, perhaps to some extent, promising region... Most likely, despite the impressive amount, the expenses can eventually be covered by income only in theory. And that's not counting the risks... but in our case, it doesn't matter. Since the problem needs to be solved this way and that, then why not combine the useful with the profitable? Moreover, where a floating crane cannot cope, one water spirit can do just fine, right?

In general, the division of tasks among the headquarters of our as yet unnamed corporation (or is it still a society?) it gave quick and positive results. Where I used to have to take time to think about a topic that wasn't so interesting to me, the girls found information and made a primary analysis on their own and with great enthusiasm. For example, the same Rinko, who received the task of "sorting out" the patrol, having studied the available information about the work of the police, did not limit herself to this, but climbed to "dig" further. And she dug it up! Historical Japan, even if we take history just a hundred years before modern times, was still a patchwork of interests of local feudal lords, long-standing (or even centuries-old!) small-town gangs, certain "societies", legendary "hidden settlements" with ninja Shinobi and other crap. At least take the same "Wolves of Mibu", who adopted the motto "I destroy evil where I see it." Something in my paranoia tells me that the wolves were not without the influence of yokai, at least at the time of the creation of this organization: the name is too telling. And there are dozens of such examples!

Rinko, by the way, got so carried away with the assignment that I had to buy her a computer, because her parents were already seriously worried why their girl was sitting at my house until eleven at night, and returned with reddened eyes and a pretty stunned face. Fortunately, our brave handymen, as agreed, allocated part of their earnings for general needs, so they did not have to change the gold. Her parents brought the Internet into Kuzaki's house at my request — after our detailed report in their kitchen, when the daughter, usually slightly cold before studying, with burning eyes, dumped various kinds of historical "revelations" on them, the Kuzaki elders looked at me with a little wary respect. Yuto promised to "pull up" Rinko with classes? The kid said, the kid did!

Things weren't going well in theory and practice of magic either: after kicking out Yu's Potter-obsessed teammates, I treated the walls, floor, and ceiling of the clubroom with a Ferry, getting a pretty decent laboratory room for practicing all sorts of mysticism. Shimomuro received an upgrade of her favorite glasses from me, and the first series of experiments went off with a bang. At least one of Yu's compounds absorbed mana perfectly when I took a handful of an incomprehensible mixture and applied energy. It is noteworthy that the same composition flatly refused to absorb Shizuki's mana. Hmm. And Yu didn't calm down until she demanded a promise from me to do the processing of her room at her parents' house. They say that she has a LARGE collection of ingredients, mixtures and blanks for various amulets, which were simply ordered by the kami themselves, since there was such an opportunity. Well, she will give us a lecture on the basics of amulet building and alchemy, as she understands them based on online research. Naturally, we agreed.

It remains to be noted that throughout this period of late summer and early autumn, until events began to "fall apart" again, Hiroe had the least rest. According to my very, very rough estimates, she compiled the "yokai civil code for the city of Takamiya", compiled the internal rules of our structure, and with modifiers for people and for spirits. In general, she earned three hundred percent of the modest salary that she had set for herself from the "community". It wasn't that Hiroe needed the money, but the "principle point" was more important to her. In general, it turned out to be a good respite, almost a full month. And then the whole group of us went to visit Yu.

Chapter 128.

"First of all, I want to say that the information on the web is different, however, besides fantasies and outright nonsense, there are things that look quite reliable," We started talking about the topic of interest on the way to Yu's house. Suffice it to say that the information on the subject "Simple amulets and compounds" in the form of a lecture notebook from the British Magic School got into my hands through a closed section of our forum, scans of one girl from our "crazy bunch" were simply sent by a friend who knows about the "crazy" of his "lost" passion. Some kind of phishing via satellite, whatever it is...

"I'll tell you later," I promised, recalling various stories I had read there about what elementary ignorance of the procedures of public network resources leads to. And it would be fine if the magic, bankers managed to send information so that it lay unprotected on file balls for months. At least Google encrypts traffic using SSL. However, you can't say that I'm "five points" good at this either. And it's definitely worth investigating, because there's no way you can do without the Internet at work. He pulled out his phone and, half listening to Shimomuro, typed himself a note with a reminder: it would be extremely unpleasant to forget something planned. Like losing your phone... Kso! But calendar synchronization, if you enable this service from your provider, will also be available, even if not publicly available, but on someone else's resource. Damn it! Another note in the calendar...

"...The bottom line is that," Yu continued to tell us, leading us to her house, "that, as I understood it, magic as such can have two fundamentally different ways of "making". It could be some kind of spell: A method where a magician uses his gift to create mana... someone calls it a weave, someone a noose, someone a scheme in general, but the word "spell" occurs most often. When the spell is completed, the mana in it begins to be spent on performing a certain process: from a flash of light to the most difficult transformation. The second method is an amulet. Or alchemy. There are different directions, but as far as we were able to understand and translate the summary, in general it is the same thing. All substances and objects made of them have their own magical properties. Some substances have highly pronounced properties, and simply applying magical energy to them already leads to results. It's as if the spell is made not of mana, but of material — the principle is the same. The individual parts of the amulet or the ingredients of a solution or mixture in alchemy each give their own effect, the sum or sequence of which leads to the desired result. If you strip away all the "technical nuances", in general everything is very simple. Even two people broke away from our forum "crazy bunch" — they said that we had "killed a miracle" and they were not on their way with us. By the way, they "keep" it potteryaoi.jp.

"I hope you haven't told your "crazy company" anything about us?" Hiroe asked in an indifferent tone.

"Do you think I'm such a fool? Of course not, the Yakuza don't give away their own!"

I groaned inwardly: again! Meanwhile, Yu opened the front door with her key, and before we could take off our shoes, a small hurricane named Shimomuro Sato hit us.

"si-i-i-i-i-ister! Hello, hello, hello! Andwhodidyoubring?! Theseareyourfriends, right?!"

In general, for technical reasons, I had to take a break: the younger brother Yu literally charmed Rinko and Hiroe, who immediately clung to him from both sides like pincers. Naturally, Fidget got tired of hugging after about twenty seconds — but fuck it, I should have run earlier! The older sister, with a vengeful smile clearly visible, explained to him that the guests should be treated with respect... and let yourself be squeezed half to death. Well, what can I say, Sato Shimomuro, you're a MAN! Sato obediently endured being pulled by the hair, stroking his head, and stupid questions like "are you already going to the potty yourself?" and other cute manifestations of gender sadism. However, his suffering paid off in just five minutes, when Rinko, in a fit of emotion, threw the child to the ceiling. AND, THANK KAMI, SHE CAUGHT IT! Well, in kendo classes, Rinko never allowed herself to "count" by strengthening her muscles...

"sister!!! You're so strong!"

for me, it's a completely stupid Japanese habit to call a friend older than yourself "sister/brother," but I bit my tongue and didn't get involved, even though I was offended. Let Kuzaki figure it out for herself.

"Otherwise, I'm the strongest girl in school! That's because I'm the district's kendo champion!"

Anyway, after a minute and a half, my neighbor and the little misunderstanding of the Shimomuro family were already learning some kata, and Rinko turned into a "sensei." Mizuchi, having taken the tea set from Yu, also found something to her liking, and we drank tea in a very family way, since Yu's parents, who had been warned about our arrival the day before, had already gone somewhere after work.

Nevertheless, an hour later we returned to the topic of the meeting. Yu's room is... well, a girly room, but not too much. Stars on the ceiling, glowing in the dark (demonstrated), a selection of paper books on mysticism, a bed, a TV on the wall with a good diagonal, a computer on the desktop. I went to the book rack and was naturally shocked: if I ignored Necromicon, considering it fake, then Lovecraft and Hammer of Witches with King on the same shelf made an impression on me. Did Yu's parents even look at them?! Facepalm...

While I was feeling the walls, floor and ceiling (the location of the ladder was known to Shimomuro), the girl pulled out an impressive box from under the bed. I opened it. And... yes! It was the largest collection of jars, cones, bundles, and even herbarium albums that I had ever seen. The content matched. And if captions like "a plantain stalk at the intersection of six roads on June 6 at 6 a.m." only led to some confusion, then after reading "cemetery land from the Jewish cemetery, midnight, Halloween," I decided to save my nerves and did not ask about the phalanges of fingers or the ears of the dead.

"You've done such a great job... work... I don't even know what word to use to express mine... admiration from... from... from your abilities!"

"Die, you can't say it better, you know!" Mizuchi whispered, just as I had seen the magnificent example of human perseverance... or stubbornness?!

"Believing in a miracle can work miracles," The future headman shrugged her shoulders in a calm and very adult way. And how does your belief in miracles feel after recent events?" The short-haired woman asked seriously. Faith has not gone away, but miracles have... Here, next to me is a yokai who can turn into water and brew a real drink of the gods from Dad's cheap tea! A miracle just needs to be seen. Okay, shall we start?

Then the routine began. Take a cone / jar / twig. Release some mana. If the response is somehow different from the standard power outage, log it. Pass the jar to Shizuka. Take the next one... Dreary, monotonous. Sato stopped by a couple of times to see what kind of nonsense we were messing with. The third time, he couldn't stand it, picked up one of the unopened vials and squeezed it in his hand too.

"Sato..."

"Yes, let it play," Yu was making notes in her ingredients catalog, "There is nothing dangerous there. And I didn't bring anything particularly nasty home."

"You don't even know what he got."

"This is the pollen of linden flowers."

"Oh, well, ok... Sato, put it down!.."

But it was too late. I have never seen in person how a person literally turns blue in five heartbeats and falls with a wheeze, unable to stand on suddenly weak legs.

"Sato!!!"

"What's going on..."

"What's wrong with him?!"

Yu picked up the child, but immediately received a poke in the side from me:

"Get the inhaler out of his medicine cabinet! Don't stand there! RUN!!!"

"It's bad, you know," Mizuchi collapsed next to me on her knees. "What's wrong with him?"

"Anaphylactic shock." as always in a period when it is necessary to act quickly, my emotions have gone somewhere. "It is necessary to flush the respiratory tract and trachea. Can you do it?"

"I'm doing it!"

The guy's eyes were already staring at the ceiling, he didn't seem to see anything, and he barely twitched when the water from the snake's palms poured into his mouth in a living stream, only to pour out in a few moments. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. Pushing the door open with a bang, Yu returned to the room with a can of inhaler.

"Mizuchi, make the solution evenly cover the throat and larynx, trachea and bronchi," I held the baby's mouth open with one hand and pressed the spray button, preventing the jet from running out. "Are there syringes and injections in the medicine cabinet in case of an attack? Yes, answer me!"

"I have syringes, but I don't know about medications. My mother was only talking about this, and calling an ambulance." Tears were continuously flowing from Yu's eyes, but she didn't even seem to notice it. Shizuka pushed the baby's chest, and he took a hoarse breath... with difficulty. The snake pulled up Sato's shirt and literally lifted and lowered his ribs with both hands, just touching his palms. The blueness subsided a little, but the clearly visible swelling on the face and upper half of the body only increased, slowly but steadily.