Chapter 1

Earth. St. Petersburg. Hospital of the Sixth. Sixth floor. Ward number six. .

Smoke, smoke everywhere. I must be the only one left on this floor, the rest of the patients and medical staff have fled. Well, at least I'll finally die, and it won't be hot. While I have some time, I will tell you more about myself and my life, as well as about the current situation:

My body was born twenty-nine years ago into a rather wealthy family of a diplomat and a teacher of Russian language and literature. For fifteen years we lived, we lived well, my parents made me two brothers and a sister a year, two and three younger. But apparently someone upstairs thought that too well the family Yazykov, and in July 2002, while walking me and my mother was hit by a car. My mother was lucky - she got away with a bump on her head and two fractured fingers on her left hand, but I was deprived of the ability to walk, to cope independently, to eat and even to speak..... complete paralysis. At first my family took care of me: my mother brought a lot of books and read them, my father taught me languages: English, French, German, Spanish and even Latin, thanks to my father; my sister and brothers also often brought a lot of interesting things to see and read. However, as time went by, their visits became less and less frequent, and now my sister had left to study in Boston, my brothers had families and moved around Russia, my mother, of course, came once a week to check on me, but it was obvious that it was a habit. To tell the truth, it was a good thing that they left me alone, because if their visits had been frequent, they could have come today and most likely would have tried to drag my body out of the hospital, and would have burned with me.

  January 1, 2016 the most joyous and the saddest day of Vlad Yazykov's life - the day when the first pain of burned lungs in fourteen years brought peace to the young man's soul, or not...

Zing!

Warning! You will die in 10 minutes from carbon monoxide asphyxiation.

BUT! Our Horned Friends firm is giving you a CHANCE!

For just one-sixth of your soul, our experts will fuse your spiritual and conscious origins, allowing you to retain your memory during REINCARNATION! But that's not all, you also have a CHANCE to get one of 666 unique abilities bought back from LEGENDARY personalities of 666 dimensions! Don't miss out! Build the road to greatness of your PERSONALITY with pieces of your soul!

If you agree, blink consecutively 666 times.

"What the devil, is this a deathbed delusion? Or is it the lack of oxygen that's making my brain go haywire? Great, if it's not a glitch, then it turns out that Buddhists are right, and our life doesn't end with death: the personality will simply be erased, and the soul will start a new life. I would like to keep my personality, of course, but I don't want to tear off a part of my immortal soul to some horny people, I don't know what they will do. Hoh...khe...somehow...something...is...not...so...,ah...is...is...everything? Finally..." 

  And while our hero's consciousness was going out, his instincts were still working, the fire still hadn't spread to Vlad's body, the smoke still irritated his eyes, and his eyes still blinked, and blinked until they closed for the 666th time.

The dimension of the Mystic Prophet. Eastern sector from the central ring of universes. The supreme shadow of the "Pure Mind" universe. The world "Pure Mind" codenumbered 34b. Plan Architeni class artificer of Lord Veseth's "Strange".

The two figures were walking through the empty streets of the capital city of the once great, one might say the greatest state of the High Shadow of World 34b. Once here, in the darkest Weser, there was no shortage of sentient beings of all kinds and forms: demons, monsters and creatures*, undead, dark folk, and, of course, shadows, all hosted by the greatest of the shadow lords of the last three thousand years-Lord Weset "Strange". However, the lord was not eternal, in his thirteen thousand years he began to lose his powers: the souls of mortals no longer held in his shadow and slowly drifted into the great void, where they were purified and transported to other dimensions and universes, powerful abilities ceased to work, and the power of the lord disappeared.

  Lord Veseth was strange, but not a fool: he gathered all his dignitaries and servants and ordered them to find a way to rejuvenate themselves, promising them the strength to move to the higher ones. A strange request to the darkest of creatures, to those who had become the strongest through sheer cunning, but here was the reward. The reward was high - it was worth it, for only a lord could make a lord supreme, and only four in his lifetime.

And many of the dignitaries thought then: "Luck will be weak, and I will be supreme...THIS IS THE CHANCE!" 

The two figures walked through the deserted streets of Vezer, past ancient buildings from the time of dawn, past dark towers where the strongest psions, espers and coduns once lived, and discussed their plan.

  -Anubis, are you sure our Lucifer ritual will work? After all, in the world of "Pure Mind" (the central world of the universe, by the way) the laws of nature are so chaotically ordered that the mixture of demonic and mystical energy can behave completely unpredictably, and the result will be far from our expectations. Asked a short creature on four spider legs, hunchbacked, with four arms and eight eyes on a surprisingly beautiful, for such a body face, his much taller interlocutor. The question only elicited a heavy sigh from the black-skinned, dog-faced humanoid giant. Psogolovy stopped, looked down at the ugly, handsome spider, sighed once more, which made the giant's ears, which had previously stood erect, droop, making his face quite cute... if you can call the face of a five-meter tall, upright Doberman cute, and answered:

  - "Runner" Marikan, I know everything you've just told me, and I have just as many, if not more, arguments against the ritual of the game of souls, but all of them are overridden by the possibility of gathering as much pure spiritual energy as there probably isn't even in the Pure Soul worlds. And it is this energy, in its purest form, that we lack to renew the shadow of the lord.

  -But "Crash" Anubis, we've reworked this ritual beyond recognition. If he used to take whole souls into the arena, where they fought for eternity, thus producing energy like prana, then in our version, by taking a sixth part of the soul from sixty-six souls from sixty-six worlds and combining their core personality with the seed of the creator, we will get an unpredictable result. Shut up, I know that this sixth part of the soul will be processed into the purest spiritual energy, but what to do with the test subjects, we will let them go into the void. THEY will TRANSFORM without the soul part, THEY will remember their past lives, thus the balance will be broken. I'm afraid it will cause a war with the Golden City and the Pyramid of the Atom, and we can't fight the gods and the goddamn Absolute, especially since the lord will still be weak," the hunchbacked handsome man wailed worriedly. 

  - There will be no war! - Anubis roared, causing his companion's single hair to stand on end and his knees to buckle... all four of them, but not out of fear, no. The runner was preparing to reaffirm his nickname once more and kick his ass.

  -You're such an asshole, "Runner" Marikan. The balance will not be broken, because the souls will be immediately thrown out of our dimension, after being in the void not as it should be, but literally an hour. And most likely they will be thrown into the world-dump or world-cleaning, where they will freeze for the rest of eternity or will be wiped out, - explained the eared man satisfied with himself. Whether he was pleased that he had come up with such an ingenious plan or that he had frightened the eight-eyed man was unclear.

-Ll-ladda-but, "Crash" Anubis, you've convinced me. But why. 

-That's enough! We're getting close. There you see the square of six crossroads, decide to come with me or run away, then don't hope for a reward! 

Silence reigned. "Crash" walked, looking straight ahead, while "Runner" lowered his beautiful face and slowly, sometimes shuddering, waddled after his more confident ally.  And the ally was not nicknamed "Crash" for nothing, for not only did he bring all the plans of his enemies to a crashing halt, but his own plans often failed. But the reward, it would come in handy for "Runner". To become supreme! Unthinkable! He was formerly an ordinary courier of the Lord's delivery service, even more distant past apprentice to a chimerologist of souls, and could not dream of evolving into a supreme, and he had only recently become average.

  -So, spider, you're with me. A soft growl from somewhere above made the humpback stir. Looking up, the four-armed man stumbled into the attentive gaze of black eyes, and mesmerized by the hidden power that lay in their depths, in one breath he uttered:

  - I am with you, Lord of the Night.

  -Good. Find the pure souls and send them the contract, while I prepare the ritual.

At the same time, in the small greenhouse, the Strange Ghost had an itch just below his back, which was the second time in the last three hundred years for the still dead creature, after the first time he had acquired a tail, thanks to the dignitaries "Army" and "Aquarius".

  -I hope it's not the dignitary "Crash." I'm afraid I won't want to be reborn after his mistake... It's itchy. 

  -Lord! The Crash and Runner dignitaries have announced the start of Lucifer's updated ritual! This is genius! Eh, it's a shame I didn't figure out how to use the soul parts to restore you myself. But that's okay, I can still gain your trust when the resurrection happens! Ah, why...

But the creature that had once been an architrave was no longer listening to his most loyal follower named "Tail" Nyara. The Lord experienced a strange feeling, one that had not been peculiar to him since he had become a middle entity - that feeling was TERROR.