Murder of the Mechanical Monks Maniacs

Outside the window, the Satanists were raging. Dmitry Kurnosov heard their bandit-like hooting, intertwined with shouts in a language unknown to him.

The crypt he was currently in was empty, with only a small table and a few chairs in one of its rooms, probably to provide a place for his guard to sit during night observations or daytime watch.

But Dmitry Kurnosov didn't care much about that - after all, the main thing was that he was relatively safe here, unless one of these cultist, who were now rushing around the street in chaotic disarray, suddenly got it into their heads to climb over the windowsill and thereby burn him down in this place.

Was it worth being afraid of? After all, these monks weren't really that scary. Sure, they were armed with air guns, and if they really wanted to, they could throw a couple of flashbang grenades in your face, which had more of an effect than damage, but all of this was essentially just a sham.

The toy guns of these idiots couldn't do any real damage, no matter how hard they tried. But he was allowed to mow down these cultist like grass, for which he always had his trusty double-barreled sawed-off shotgun and a rusty pitchfork with four prongs, which he didn't hesitate to use.

That is why Dmitry Kurnosov was not the least bit afraid of these monks wrapped in brown cassocks, and when he successfully killed a couple of other idiots, he even gave them his famous cynical smile, which, combined with his red contact lenses and black long-brimmed hat, had a truly magical effect on them all...

True, the impression was slightly spoiled by his chubby cheeks and beer belly, but Dmitry Kurnosov could not do anything about it, because more than anything in the world he loved to sip a couple of beers and have a snack of this drink of the Antichrists with his favorite cherries, the pits of which he simply adored spitting from a distance, which he often used to beat his much less fortunate in this matter friends, such as, for example, Mark, who was also a fat and contented dude, similar to Dmitry Kurnosov himself like a brother, with the exception of one difference - if Dmitry Kurnosov had black hair, then Mark, on the contrary, was blond, for which he received the nickname "The Monkey", which he owed to his manner of aping people of his rank, among whom was, of course, Dmitry Kurnosov himself.

Besides, if Mark was an impenetrable fool, who found it harder to get anything new into his head than to build the Eiffel Tower at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, then Dmitry Kurnosov was an unusually accommodating guy, with whom it was pleasant to deal.

He pressed himself against the wall, trying not to make a sound. His heart was pounding in unison with the screams of the Satanists, which were now very close. Dmitry huddled around the sawed-off shotgun, ready for any turn of events.

Suddenly there was a rustling sound outside the window - someone was trying to open the window. Satanist, who else, Dmitry Kurnosov chuckled to himself, hearing their voices growing in aggression, mixing with screams and hysterical laughter.

"Well, finally at least one of you thought to climb over the windowsill, idiots," a cheerful thought flashed through his mind.

Dmitry Kurnosov knew that now was not the time to throw his brains around, either figuratively or literally. So he immediately cocked both hammers of his trusty sawed-off shotgun, preparing for a fight. One of the Satanists came into view.

His brown cassock fluttered in the wind, and his face was filled with a wild confidence. Dmitry pressed his finger to the trigger, listening to his instincts. The thought flashed through his mind: "Now or never."

The enemy came closer, and Dmitry, without waiting for the moment when he could see him, suddenly jumped out of cover and pointed his weapon straight at him.

"Hey you, Monk The Shmonk!" he shouted, "how about a shot to the face?"

For a moment, the cultist paused, as if realizing that his victim was ready to fight in earnest. The tiny yellow eyes hidden deep under the cap of his cassock filled with rage, and he took a step forward, aiming his solid-looking weapon, which was in fact an innocent blowgun, at Dmitry Kurnosov.

But Dmitry Kurnosov did not waste time and fired first. Having been struck by a powerful charge of shot, the cultist fell to the floor, letting out a loud cry.

Dmitry Kurnosov heard how the other cultist, who continued to rush around outside the crypt, screamed when they heard the dying cry of their comrade and began to run to the entrance doors - apparently, their chicken brains could not figure out that the way through the window was much faster.

"Well, at least one of them had such an idea," Dmitry Kurnosov chuckled, looking at the cold corpse in a brown cassock lying in front of him without any traces of blood on the body.

The latter was due to the fact that Dmitry Kurnosov had such an unpleasant phobia as hematophobia - in other words, he could not stand the sight of blood, and that is why all the cultist whom he mowed down in droves simply did not have it.

His friend Mark "The Monkey" even mocked him on this issue, saying that if you want to be a real fighter, then teach yourself to overcome your disgust at the sight of this red liquid, but after someone - Dmitry Kurnosov still didn't know who - secretly slipped packets of red paint under the cassocks of a couple of Satanists, which were specially placed in places where he liked to poke his pitchforks, Mark "The Monkey" had to take his words back, because he was far from enjoying carrying the unconscious plump Dmitry Kurnosov on his shoulders straight from the battlefield to the nearest hospital, where the latter was given a sniff of ammonia in order to bring him to his senses.

In general, Dmitry Kurnosov could do nothing about this phobia of his, and therefore when he went out to fight, all the canisters and tubes that created the illusion of bleeding wounds were removed from the Satanists especially for him.

Be that as it may, at this moment Dmitry Kurnosov had already managed to kill his first cultist of the day, and this was only one of many that he still had to put out. Dmitry Kurnosov was not a big fan of looking at his kill stats, but he still realized that the organizers of The Blood Polygon wanted the best possible results from him, and he was simply embarrassed in front of them with a single killed cultist, when all his comrades were killing these idiots by the billions.

Therefore, having admired the work of his hands, he decided to finally leave this cozy crypt and go out into the open field, where a whole crowd of his potential targets awaited him.

He stood there for a moment, adjusting his pitchfork - he noticed that the leftmost prong was slightly bent and wanted to straighten it - and then, chuckling to himself, he moved forward down the corridor, holding his bladed weapon straight out in front of him.

He walked quickly, not wanting to waste time. He was already prepared for the fact that if someone came his way or tried to stop him, he would have to immediately hit them in the ribs with a pitchfork... But, to his surprise, there was not a soul in this crypt - all its corridors were empty.

Even in the rooms where Dmitry Kurnosov looked, there was no one except rats (on whom it was a sin to waste ammunition). Then Dmitry began to think it was strange that there were no enemies: after all, they should be here!

Or did they panic and not figure out what was going on and kill each other? Could that even happen when he specifically asked the cultist not to react to friendly fire?

And then it finally dawned on Dmitry Kurnosov - the cultist weren't fools, they simply wanted to catch him off guard with such a maneuver! They thought to lull his attention by not entering his shelter, and then, when he came out, attack him unexpectedly from behind!

But why had they never used such tactics before? Had the organizers managed to improve their intelligence during the time he had not visited The Blood Polygon, or was it something else entirely? In any case, Dmitry Kurnosov had already decided to leave this hateful crypt and go out for a fair fight, instead of sitting here like a coward.

Reaching the door leading to the street, he kicked it open and immediately caught a flashbang grenade in the face. Yes, he thought, randomly jabbing his pitchfork forward, the Satanists really had a bad brain if they thought of setting up an ambush for him.

Blinded and deafened, he continued to fight furiously, feeling how each of his blind blows hit the target precisely - many years of skill were telling. When his sight finally returned - and this did not happen immediately, since the flashes of flashbang grenades were very bright even for Dmitry Kurnosov's eyes, who were accustomed to them - he saw that dozens of corpses were lying under his feet, and the two remaining cultist were running away as fast as they could, not wanting, however, to part with their air rifles.

"Smart suckers!" Dmitry Kurnosov chuckled. "They realized that things were going badly and decided to run away!"

This had never been observed in the cultist before, which only confirmed his guess that the organizers of The Blood Polygon had managed to hire a couple of programmers who had finally managed to write the ambush and escape functions for the artificial intelligence of these dummies.

Now there was one thing left to find out - had these descendants of John Carmack's case forgotten about giving artificial idiots the ability to help each other? But no, thought Dmitry Kurnosov, that guy running on the left had clearly forgotten about his comrade and was thinking only about his own skin.

Well, he concluded, let them run, two idiots, maybe they'll understand at least one simple rule - don't attack a hero like Dmitry Kurnosov!

With these thoughts, he turned his back on the cultist who had already practically disappeared into the distance and suddenly saw their third comrade in front of him, who was standing a little further away near the wall of the crypt that Dmitry Kurnosov had left a couple of minutes ago.

This third one had his air rifle ready, but for some mysterious reason he was in no hurry to pull the trigger. This seemed suspicious to Dmitry, because usually these idiots always shoot without thinking, as soon as they spot an enemy, but now the situation was unusual.

Perhaps, thought Dmitry Kurnosov, another upgrade of intelligence? We need to figure this out, and in the meantime we can do anything else.

He took a few steps to the side to try to get out of the cultist's line of sight - usually that maneuver worked with these idiots - but he didn't even have time to take two steps before he finally fired.

Dmitry Kurnosov immediately fell face down on the ground, after which he immediately jumped up with a berserker cry and saw right in front of him the barrel of a blowgun aimed at his face...

He didn't even have time to get scared when he suddenly felt that, against his will, his hands had automatically raised their blades and thrust them at the enemy. He had time to think about whether his self-awareness sometimes outpaced his common sense? - but immediately realized that this was not so.

He simply forgot that there was a mechanism built into the pitchfork that, when its owner was threatened, would begin to rush at the enemy, like a dog unleashed.

But it didn't matter anymore, because suddenly a small telephone in the inside pocket of his black coat began to vibrate furiously, and a cheerful song began to thunder from the speakers: "The upper hatches are battened down, the steering wheel is shining!"

"Sea songs, yes, yes," Dmitry Kurnosov muttered to himself, throwing the pitchfork aside and taking his phone out of the inside pocket of his black coat.

At the same time, he managed to notice that the cultist, who had been hit in the steel chest with a homing pitchfork, was still holding on and was ready to fire another round of salt at Dmitry Kurnosov, but the latter only had to press the call button on his phone for his opponent to freeze in place, as if by magic, in the pose he had been in during the last second of his activity.

Now he was dead as a log - dead until Dmitry Kurnosov ended the call and pressed the button. After that, of course, the dummy's artificial intelligence would be activated again, and the cultist would pounce on the man as if nothing had happened, but Dmitry Kurnosov had no time for these considerations, because he had already accepted the call and was preparing to begin a dialogue with the unknown subscriber.

"Hello everyone, this is Shuster!" he introduced himself cheerfully, using the pseudonym he was listed under in the paperwork related to the landfill.

"You're insulting me, Dmitry!" a familiar voice answered him. "Didn't you recognize me?"

"I'm not Dmitry, The Monkey, I'm Shuster!" Dmitry Kurnosov rejoiced.

"Oh, come on," Mark responded. "You better tell me why you're fidgeting around there like that? You're scary to look at! Now, quickly kill the cultist right in front of you!"

"Are you kidding me?" Dmitry Kurnosov asked, puzzled. "Are you sitting in the control room?"

"Yeah!" confirmed Mark. "We're sitting here with Martin Weber, drinking beer, watching you deal with these idiots with ease."

"You're lucky, The Monkey," said Dmitry Kurnosov. "Not everyone gets the honor of going behind the scenes at the proving ground."

"Of course!" answered Mark. "I was buddies with Martin, didn't you know? I helped him with Final Dhewm back in the day. He wasn't as cool back then as he is now! And you, it turns out..."

"Yes, yes," Dmitry Kurnosov hastened to answer, "when I worked for him as a consultant, we also talked about this topic..."

"No, well, imagine," Mark interrupted him, "how many years have passed, but I still can't help but be amazed: this man is sitting here next to the screens and so easily talking to me about all these little things, and he himself, just a minute, hasn't even finished elementary school!"

"Really?" Dmitry Kurnosov was surprised.

"I'm serious!" Mark continued. "Our Martin Weber was once kicked out of school because in the second grade he wrote an essay on the topic that, supposedly, there is no "time for work and a time for play", but just the opposite!"

"So what's wrong with that?" Dmitry Kurnosov didn't understand.

"You know what school is like!" said Mark. "People who work there can't understand that they were children themselves, so they take all these things very seriously! And when they saw that little Martin had written something that contradicted their worldview, they immediately decided among themselves that such a student was dangerous for everyone else, and they expelled him in no time! Can you imagine?"

"To be honest, no," Dmitry Kurnosov answered his friend. "What a thing to do, to expel a boy just because he wrote in one unfortunate essay that, supposedly, work is nothing, hedonism is everything!"

"By the way, this same "boy" is sitting next to me right now and can hear everything we're talking about here," Mark reminded him. "Oh, I don't envy you when you come back from The Blood Polygon and meet him face to face!"

"Oh, come on, The Monkey," Dmitry Kurnosov chuckled. "What a way to scare me - the school past of our chief technician!"

"But I did warn you," Mark said in a serious tone. "Keep your eyes peeled, buddy, and don't let the Antichrist do anything wrong. Otherwise, he'll grind you into dust, so much so that you won't even have time to squeak!"

"Stop pulling the wool over my eyes," Dmitry Kurnosov replied with a laugh. "Better tell me why you called me at all when I'm here at The Blood Polygon doing my job."

"I see how you're doing it!" Mark answered ironically. "You only killed seven cultist! When there were seventeen on the field! Where are the other ten, where, I ask?"

"Oh, stop it, you're annoying," Dmitry Kurnosov answered tiredly. "It would be better to answer the question I asked you directly."

"Okay, you've convinced me," Mark conceded to him and switched from a joking tone of conversation straight to business. "I don't know exactly all the details about the new round of fluid bio-warfare, but I can say one thing: there is one oddity in it... Or rather, two oddities! The first is this: when our specialists were preparing to launch production of new bio-robots to fight the forces of The Omen Ica, our opponents somehow found out about this before we did and managed to develop their own new-generation means even before we officially announced it to the whole world through our agents of influence in the power structures of the Union of Indestructible Nations! This was done so quickly compared to the development time of our own bio-robots that I personally have no doubt that there is a rat among our specialists!"

"Well, all we have to do is catch this "rat" and bring him to trial," Dmitry Kurnosov yawned.

"Are you a fool?" Mark flared up. "What's the point of crushing this 'rat' if our enemies have long since used our knowledge to their advantage?"

"And what do you suggest we do in that case?" Dmitry Kurnosov asked him wearily.

"Personally, I am in favor of, as they say, an eye for an eye," his interlocutor answered with a strange rise in his voice.

"What do you mean?" Dmitry Kurnosov did not understand.

"It's simple," Mark began to explain his idea, "just destroy them to hell and back, or at least try to take them out of the game by concluding an agreement with all the countries that hold anti-omenican positions. Just imagine - Morth Corea and the Union of Indestructible Nations - this whole gang would be pissing themselves with boiling water from such an alliance!"

"Easy, The Monkey, easy," Dmitry Kurnosov decided to cool his friend's ardor. "The way you say - to take and kill - is impossible, otherwise it will be the last thing we can do in this life. After all, you must understand that as we do them, so they do us."

"Huh?" Mark pretended to be a fool.

"We bomb them, and they bomb us, got it, The Monkey?" said Dmitry Kurnosov. "What, you don't understand shit about these things?"

"No," answered Mark, "I just don't understand... How is that possible? We've been at odds with them since the Great May War! It's been that way since time immemorial that the Union of Indestructible Nations is a wolf to The Omen Ica! And then suddenly, here you go - they take it so brazenly, with a flourish..."

"What "brazenly", what "flourish"?" Dmitry Kurnosov began to inquire.

"Oh, forget it, I've already forgotten what I wanted to say," Mark answered in a low voice. "But I want to tell you this - the boss showed up with his friends, he wants to see you..."

"What, boss?" Dmitry Kurnosov asked, looking straight ahead. "What boss? Oh, that's the one from Alma-Thou... Well, yes! He's the one in charge of bio-soldier affairs! So what does he want from me?"

"The boss wants you to meet him. Right now and immediately," his friend began to explain slowly, deliberately. "Otherwise, he's already threatening to transfer you to Alma-Thou. Well, so that you're always at hand and he doesn't have to trudge from his native United Juzes of Kasakhia to us here in Pet-el-burge. Or as they say on TV, the next moment may forever be the last..."

"I didn't understand what you wanted to say with your last words," Dmitry Kurnosov interrupted him, "but one thing is clear to me - if our boss suddenly came to us from his distant Alma-Thou just to see my humble person, then either things are really bad, or he decided that I should help him..."

"Don't talk about the boss like that," Mark interrupted. "He just wants you to meet his new friend, who just agreed to work with us today."

"Well, he agreed and agreed, to hell with him, but what does this have to do with me?" Dmitry Kurnosov was still perplexed. "The world doesn't revolve around me, you see!"

"Listen here," Mark began instead of answering, "you look out the window and see your neighbors from the house across the street - how they sit around the table at one o'clock during lunch and talk to each other about everything under the sun, and then one of them gets up from his seat and goes to the phone, calls someone and talks, and at this time you see all this through the window and think - why didn't those idiots, your neighbors, curtain their windows. Got it?"

"What kind of nonsense did you just tell me?" Dmitry Kurnosov got angry. "What does this everyday stuff have to do with the fact that the boss wants to see me with his friend?"

"Firstly, the boss is with not one, but two "buddies", as you put it," Mark began in a reasoning tone. "Secondly, regarding the neighbors - I'm hinting to you that we are all to some extent like these hypothetical neighbors. They sit there, discuss their problems, and you worry that they are talking about you behind your back. But in the end, perhaps their conversations are worthless."

"You've completely confused me!" Dmitry Kurnosov replied. "How can all this nonsense be connected to the fact that I have to go to a meeting with the boss now? Maybe he really does have some kind of plans for me, but I'm not interested! I just don't want to go to him blindly, not knowing what to expect from him!"

"I understand," Mark said, still maintaining a calm tone. "But that's the whole point. You're worried about the boss and his buddies talking about you, but the real point is that you decide how to react to everything.

"It's easy for you to say that when you've never walked in my shoes," Dmitry Kurnosov muttered. "I feel like I did that time during the chemistry exam, when I didn't know the answer to a single question and sat on pins and needles, holding a pen in my right hand.

"I understand," said Mark, trying to take a more serious tone. "But remember that back then you still found the strength in yourself and were able to squeeze something out of yourself!"

"Yes, but that's beside the point," Dmitry Kurnosov reasonably noted. - We're talking about work now, and important things may be at stake. If the boss decides that I'm not good enough, he'll just fire me and that's it!

"Listen," Mark began, "maybe you don't know exactly what will happen at the meeting, but you know for sure that you are the kind of person who will definitely listen to your opinion, especially if the conversation turns to things of great importance.

"It's like you're trying to slap a hefty price tag on me," Dmitry Kurnosov replied. "I don't feel like an expert in anything other than training on the range, and frankly, sometimes I feel like I'm looked down on by everyone else."

"What are you saying!" Mark was surprised. "That's not true at all. You know that we all value you."

"Maybe you, as my friend, really think so," Dmitry Kurnosov persisted, "but I'm sure that if I find myself in the company of the boss and his 'buddies', I'll immediately feel like an idiot, because everyone around me will know what they're talking about, and I'll have to pretend that I understand them too, although in reality that's not the case at all."

"You're right to some extent," said Mark, holding back a smile. "But I'll give you the following advice: when you find yourself in the company of the boss, imagine for the duration of the conversation that you're on the same page with him, and that you're not just a spectator, but someone whose opinion he'll simply have to listen to."

"In words I'm Lev Tolstoy," Dmitry Kurnosov drawled. "But in reality... Well, you understand yourself, how can I suddenly start perceiving him as an equal, and not as a boss who has me by the balls?"

"Just think for a minute that you have the same goal as him," Mark suggested. "Get into the idea that you want the same thing he does, and that you have ideas on how to help him in his endeavors. If you stop being afraid of his status and imagine him as your ally, all your stress will disappear, I guarantee it!"

"And how do you imagine my actions?" Dmitry Kurnosov asked him. "Do you think I should just enter the office with the thought that, like, I am he, and he is me, like in the penultimate song from Depeche Mode's "Sexciter"?"

"Well, not exactly," Mark chuckled. "Although, who knows, maybe it would work as an additional doping for you! But still, the main thing is the realization that you are on the same wavelength with him. This does not mean that you should completely merge with him. Remain yourself, brother, just approach the conversation more openly and be ready to cooperate."

"What if I'm suddenly not in the mood?" asked Dmitry, still not feeling confident. "I'll walk into the office all pissed off, but I won't be able to find the right words?"

"There's always a first time for everything," Mark noted philosophically. "No one will expect you to give a perfect performance. Don't hide your awkwardness, laugh at yourself. You can even openly tell your boss: "You know, I don't even know where to start!" This can defuse the situation."

"Okay, I'll take this phrase on board," Dmitry Kurnosov figured. "But still, our boss has such a look that just looking at him makes your heart sink."

"Well, you're overdoing it," Mark chuckled. "You know as well as I do what he really looks like. He's only so cool in the photos, but in real life..."

"Yes, yes, I know!" Dmitry Kurnosov interrupted him. "He's just afraid to show his weakness in front of others, that's why he compensates for his tiny stature with huge ambitions towards other people."

"That's just our boss," Mark picked up, "he has this weakness, he wants to look like a macho with a capital letter, so that everyone around him thinks: since he runs a corporation producing bio-soldiers, then he can certainly make everyone around him happy with just a snap of his finger! And if someone tries to say a bad word about him or even doubt him even a little bit, then he immediately begins to frown so menacingly and squint his eyes that, as you said, "it's like your soul is in your heels."

"Yeah..." Dmitry Kurnosov began to recall his boss's habits. "And also that sideways glance of his from the series "I'll show you Kuzka's mother now!""

"I have long noticed this character trait in him," said Mark, "when they talk to him about anything serious, well, about business or politics, he looks somewhere into the distance over the interlocutor with the gaze of a man with a nuclear reactor instead of a heart, and at the same time he tries with all his appearance to show the interlocutor his complete indifference to everything that is happening. And that is why our guys try to talk to him as laconically as possible, so as not to show him their true feelings..."