The next night he went on the prowl armed with the bread which the blonde had brought in. In that picturesque pond, there lived some pencil-necked swans; Kyon lured one of those beauties away from its kin with a piece of bread. The legacy of the Pithecanthropus ancestors of his flashed in his mind, he stunned the winged one with a stone, straight on its silly little head, and disappeared in his dear bushes holding the limp carca.s.s, content like a fox, who'd stolen a fat rooster on the farm.

In the hide, the execution continued: with the help of Synergy Kyon cut the nerve in the bird's vocal cords to keep its beak shut, and paralyzed the bird's muscular system. Now the swan could only turn its head: an ideal testee. Of course, in the future, he was going to get the bird back to the pond safe and sound, after all, he was no slaughterer, and the swan was not Juno.

The white-winged bird awoke, its eyes opened in dismay: the body didn't move, the throat didn't quack! The poor fellow desperately twirled its head, trying to escape, all to no avail.

Kyon focused, he put his finger on the bird's forehead and tried to impose a slot with the elemental force. It was not as easy as he'd hoped...

A special tool was needed to apply the slot faster and easier; he was going to fail to do that manually, on the spot, he had to study, master the necessary skill. Ideally, it took at least three months of tireless training to develop that.

Kyon tried once, twice, the third time... For the hundredth time he lost it and cursed at his clumsiness; for the five hundredth time he started nervously looking out for a wall or at least a tree to beat to knock with his forehead for stimulating mental activity, so to speak. Two thousand times Kyon failed to learn how to apply a slot. He did not have a pattern only an idea that the slot was created by the elemental force and it should contain the formation. Consistently and for a long time.

It was his 3000-th attempt when he succeeded! The empty sphere inside the bird's head seemed to hold together and didn't collapse. The guy tried to apply a primitive formation inside it but it got successfully dispelled. Tired and given up the attempts to resist, the bird opened its beak in a silent "quack", and Kyon could have sworn that it looked scathing.

It took the guy three days to fine-tune the slot where the hidden energy would hold together permanently. In comparison with other mortals, the result of his efforts exceeded all the expectations in terms of time and quality; it was a pity that in the world where he lived there was no one to show off his talents.

The first step of the formacist was completed, now it was the time to start long-term experiments with formations, and then to practice the one that would meet his requirements.

Alright, he'd had enough of existing as a ghost of the mansion: that was how he'd called himself as practically none of the inhabitants could see or hear him, and yet he existed. Marina's barbed remark that he was a scarecrow behind the bushed did not correspond to his gloomy and mysterious image of a ghost and was rather offensive.

It took another three days to think of an idea, working out the plan of action and, most importantly, to practice on the swan. He'd reached the 4th rank of the baseline, which was very useful as a chance of success increased with the level. Ideally, he shouldn't rush and keep improving himself a year or so, however, he was under suspicion that he did not have so much time to start with. In the end, the bushes would eventually grow back, and someone was coming to trim them.

Besides, he remembered that closer to the peak ranks he was getting, the slower was the rate of development. And he didn't develop his body in any way, which meant that his development was going to be like that of a snail by the end of the stage.

The next evening, Kyon finally understood the meaning of applying the formation into the slot. Now he just had to apply the code that he'd written, optimized and pondered over each line for a hundred times. He could not even imagine to which rank his formation could be attributed. Probably, to "S", or maybe "SS", if such rank existed at all. His formation would definitely be called legendary because it contained all the skills of a guy from the high-tech world.

One more day pa.s.sed and he did it. His own formation worked smoothly, flawlessly! Probably. He couldn't test it. At least, it was applied without any errors.

According to the laws of formacy, the formation should work properly, otherwise, there was not a drop of logic in that world, and his Synergy was a stupid chicken, unable to solve 2 + 2. Indeed, he'd checked the code of the formation using Synergy for a thousand times, optimized it till one hundred percent, and now it was time to move on to the execution of the plan.

In the evening, Marina sat down on a bench, as usual, with a book in her hands: it was a standard conspiracy to communicate with her "invisible" friend in the bushes.

«Do you want to kill Lady Yuno for what she'd done to you?! I ... I won't let you! Kyon, she's my friend!» - The girl exclaimed in a low voice at Kyon's statement that he was intending to enter Juno's room.

«I am not going to kill her. It's true. I'll just fix her a little so that I could stop being the scarecrow behind the bushes. I won't hurt her, she will still be your friend. Do you believe me?» - the guy said, looking deep into the eyes of the blonde.

Marina was hesitating, frowning, sighing but, finally, she replied:

«I... I do not know... She did such things to you that I myself would have been terrified. You are not going to do anything to her?»

«Marina, I swear that I am not going to cripple, moreover kill her. I can no longer live in the bushes, I was not born for this.»

«I see... Kyon, if you say so, then I believe you... Alright, I will help you but promise that you won't fool me.»

Kyon willingly gave her his "honest" and "sincere" word. She agreed amazingly quickly. However, he could keep persuading her for a couple of days. He'd get what he wanted.

Marina seemed to calm down and won round her conscience. She had become attached to the guy so much that she could not sleep at night: she kept thinking and worrying about his wretched fate of the ghost of the mansion. Of course, she was going to believe him and help; otherwise, she risked to be completely disappointed in herself for not understanding and helping out a good person.

After the blonde had agreed to partic.i.p.ate in sabotage, Kyon explained to her in detail what he needed from her. Of course, he played on an incredibly good relations.h.i.+p with the girl, it's fair to say, he took advantage of her just as he did with Martha but it was the only way. In any case, he wanted to compensate her in full and even thought over how he would do it. As for the issue with Juno, it was a matter of life and death and it was high time to deal with it, he might be accidentally discovered any day from now.

The long awaited night had come.

Kyon got into the mansion, silently climbed upstairs and hid around the corner.

After some time, the door in Juno's bedroom opened, and the cute angel in a gray nightie sleepily stomped into the bathroom. That evening, Marina got an idea to play cards with her; after each game, the loser had to drink a gla.s.s of juice.

Kyon saw the graceful figure disappearing on the up the steps and pleaded to himself: {oh, well, hurry up!} As soon as he got a chance to move unnoticed by Juno, he darted to her room, at the very last moment he managed to put his fingers through the split in the door. Another second of delay and the pa.s.sage would be closed and could be opened only with the help of a special formation. He gave a sigh of relief, and behold, the guy entered the sanctum sanctorum of the local demoness.

The room was s.p.a.cious even taking into account the acc.u.mulation of an entire army of soft pillows and pads, apparently, they served as a subst.i.tute for fluffy toys that looked like real animals Juno was so afraid of. Every detail of the interior showed good taste, softness, and tenderness pertinent to a 13-year-old girl who had not yet lost her childhood but stopped being a kid. A pleasant aroma was in the air: a kind of mix of shampoo, perfume, and some sweets. Jean might have given much to spend a night here, even on his own.

In general, apart from the piles of pillows, there was little furniture inside. A large soft bed in the corner, a wardrobe, a cupboard, several chairs, and a table. There was nowhere to hide except, perhaps, the standard option, and Kyon, with a heavy sigh, crawled under the bed, in the hope that there was at least no dust and spiders: one monster in the room was quite enough for him. He would have twisted the very "monster" into a corkscrew: the little sc.u.m made life quite difficult for him, even tried to kill him. In fact, she did, his persistence had overpowered all her diligent attempts.

Soon the door opened, and a pair of slender bare legs in soft slippers with ears. The bed creaked slightly, the slippers reluctantly flew off the skinny feet, the girl crawled under the covers and soon began to snuffle.

After waiting for another half hour, just to be on the safe side, Kyun rolled out of his refuge, disdainfully removed the cobweb from his hair, and hovered over the young miss with an air of G.o.d of death, except that his eyes were not highlighted in red and no horns were visible from under his hair. His mind was absorbed in the bloodl.u.s.t for this particular girl but, unfortunately, he had to suppress his ruthless impulses, in the end, he could not physically harm Juno, because in that case his life would be interrupted a little later than that of the girl. He had to apply the formation and follow the plan.

Kyon slowly held out a finger when, all of a sudden, the girl frowned her brow and turned over on the other side.

The guy went splat on the floor, thunderstruck. Fortunately, the whole room was covered with soft carpets so his sudden landing was noiseless but the sensitivity and intuitive vigilance of the lady was really impressive.

Another ten minutes and he hovered over her again, trying to touch the back of her head and pour in some Synergy, so that it would contribute to a more sound sleep but Juno frowned again, turned over and opened her hazy eyes.

Kyon took a plank position at once rolled under the bed like an egg roll, almost getting a heart attack on the way. What a lucky devil!

The unsuspecting girl let down the legs from the bed, fumbled in search of slippers, and couldn't find them: Kyon scattered them around the room while doing his equilibristic tricks, so she dragged her bare feet to the bathroom.

{Marina ... You went too far! Now she takes trips to the toilet every five minutes!}