Prologue

Dear reader, I want to warn you. There will be no exact calculations or numbers in this book, there will be more reasoning and little description of the environment, characters, or situation. If that doesn't matter to you or you haven't read it, then welcome to a new world)

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The city had been in a fever for a month.

Several times a day different districts and neighborhoods were cut off from electricity and water, garbage was piling up in bins, and in some places in the center (which had never happened before, this was not the suburbs, where no one cared about anyone) it had not been taken out for more than two weeks. The inhabitants, who until then had been an inert, harmless crowd, became so bitter these days that it sometimes came to the point of absurdity: someone noticed a stranger on the other side of the street who he did not like, and climbed through the stream of cars to express his dislike, sometimes with his fists, sometimes falling under the wheels.

The number of domestic crimes and offenses increased by a couple of orders of magnitude. Not an hour went by without hearing the sirens of the emergency services, ambulances or police.

The worst brawls, claiming at least two or three lives a day, occurred on the roads. Violent drivers without a second thought used pry-blades, pieces of pipe with lead inside, bats and automatic pistols.

For several days in a row the local TV channel had been broadcasting the news that there were debates about the decision to impose a curfew in the city and a ban on citizens appearing at important sites at night without a good reason: administration, police departments, hospitals, pharmacies and jewelry stores, factories, train stations, and so on.

Where this anger in people came from I do not know, but I know when it happened - exactly twenty-nine days ago. That's when I became... a magician. Or something like that.

My ability was connected to the blood that flowed in my veins. If I put it on any object, it would get special properties. Unfortunately, there were very few of them. So far, I could strengthen an object (up to the point of being indestructible, a piece of glass was stronger than steel) or make something like a golem. By mixing a glass of blood with a couple of kilograms of clay and earth, I got a shapeless mass, similar to the famous Ghost Licker. The creature was controlled by thought, obeyed orders, and required no additional infusions of blood. A few days later, seeing that the golem did not want to crumble, and having returned the strength that had gone with a lot of bloodletting, I repeated the experience with a little less blood and clay. The experience was successful - the golem grew larger.

With my blood, I strengthened all the knives, which from that moment on held their sharpening, ceramic and glassware splendidly. I wanted to get to the window panes, but my strength was not infinite, and each bloodletting took a heavy toll on my well-being.

There was something else that cannot be silenced: the order in which I strengthened or created a quasi-living organism differed and depended on my desire. If I took the knife in my hands, sprinkled it with my blood, which at that moment was absorbed into the material like a sponge, and wished it to become strong, it happened. But once, out of curiosity, I smeared some bearing balls with blood and stuck them in the Lizard, and he accepted them easily, making something like a spider's face, you know, the face with lots of eyes that would frighten any woman when zoomed in on. Then I added some ten-penny coins, which Lizard used as scales. The durability of the coins remained the same - that is, none at all. So, if I wish (and I do, and I will soon) to make a golem for protection, I will have to take a strong material, such as stainless steel. Or wait for my Gift to take it to the next level.

Today, after buying two live chickens at the market, I decided to conduct another experiment.

- Well, cocksuckers, you don't care about the soup, but at least serve a high purpose," I muttered, gathering my resolve. I had no experience of the task of taking the lives of two living things. On the other hand, I wasn't nervous at all.

Holding the chicken by the paws and wing-tips with one hand, I put it on a piece of thick beam left from the repair of the terrace, aimed the hatchet and ...

Snap! Snap!

With the first blow to cut off the head did not work. Or rather, it almost did, but a piece of skin was left untouched, and the head wiggled on it.

- Son of a... bastard...

The awkward movement cost me a wing. It was all right, but the headless creature was still alive! It clutched at my hands and released the other wing, splashing blood on me, then broke free of my grasp and fled into the currant bushes.

While I searched for the carcass, which was still twitching two minutes later, all the blood had wasted on the ground.

- Well, first pancake, - I sighed and took hold of the second "white mouse.

Snap!

About the size of a glass I was able to draw a dark red liquid from a large chicken carcass. After that, I put the bird carcasses into a bag, put the bag into a basin and poured ice from the freezer on top. This is in order not to spoil the meat, while I will conduct my experiments.

After that came the turn of my own blood, well, there the process has already been perfected, and soon before me were a few empty syringes, one with five cc's of my own blood (the fourth group, rhesus-factor positive... mm-hmm... well, this is so, by the way) and a glass with chicken blood. An hour later the test showed that the optimal blood ratio would be one to fifteen. One cube of my blood to fifteen of the chicken's turned the ceramic knife into the strongest thing in the world. I couldn't break it, not even by pressing my whole body against the handle with the blade in the doorway. The knife absorbed the blood without a trace. In principle, I could have spent less; I could have just smeared the red liquid a few times to make it five times stronger.

- Licker!

At my shout, a mass of earth, rubble, and metal crawled into the room, as high as my waist and about seventy centimeters in diameter at the floor.

- Here's your weapon," and I threw a large ceramic knife at the golem. - Serve and protect!

My creation grasped the knife in a false leg or handle, I do not know how to call this limb, which Lizard can create several pieces and in different places, even in the upper part of his body, which I consider as his head (not without reason, because there were balls-eyes sticking out).

- Well, now we can go to the butchery," I commanded myself aloud.

In the butcher shop, passing by a sleepy guard with one of the workers, I got two thermos of fresh blood, saying that all it takes for a blood sausage, which I love to make myself. It was inexpensive, and in comparison with the chickens it was for next to nothing. While I was coming back, I had time to reproach myself a hundred times for being wasteful and lazy: it was five times easier and faster to get to the market, so I went there instead of here.

I mixed the purchase with my own blood and got three liters of magical liquid concentrate, which I poured into a pile of gravel and sand.

- Well, my stone goblin, rise," I muttered as the last drops of the red liquid soaked into the grains of sand.

In the next second, the rocks and sand came to life, transforming before my eyes into a humanoid figure-torso, two legs, two long arms, something resembling a small head. It was just the way I wanted it.

The golem was one and a half meters tall, thin, and weighed over a hundred kilograms! At the same time, it could look like a pile of construction material, and no observant eye would recognize it as otherworldly.

I wish I could take it with me into the city, because I risk getting the unhealthy interest of the officials, the media, and those citizens who like to stick their noses into other people's business. But even so, my new creature will find work at home.

I got my own place when I came out of the army a year ago. My parents, with whom I lived, offered to sell my late grandmother's old house in a nearby town about a hundred miles away. To the proceeds add their small savings collected on the car, plus credit and buy me a one-bedroom apartment in a new building.

But having looked at the proposed options, the three of us calculated that the cost of finishing the new house is more expensive than repairing the house. But the area is one and a half times more. And it is a little less than a year I have been living apart from my parents, and all the time I do something: I poured the foundation, since the old one is almost crumbling, replaced two lower wreaths on all sides, broke and built a new terrace. Sometimes I regret that I did not agree to the apartment. Let there was nothing but four walls (even partitions, bathroom and toilet, kitchen), but there is no need to change the fence, dig a well for the septic tank, to fill the track and fill in the gravel area in front of the gate, so after the rain do not get dirty in the mud. And much more.

Now decided to spit on everything and start preparing to build a bathhouse on the site of the old chicken coop, which I tore down right after moving here. Buy is not going to, I do not have that kind of money, but I have a hand and work as a security guard at the Vladivostok parking lot with a schedule of two weeks there, two weeks at home and with a good (by the standards of my area) salary.

Now for a month, my business has risen, since the moment when I first learned that I have found unprecedented abilities. I don't know what my skills and the bitterness of my countrymen are related to, but these two factors are connected for sure.

- I sighed, glanced at the golem, and mentally ordered it to fall apart, so as not to be caught in anyone's prying eyes.