Chapter 6: First Combat
I exited the building majestically in my new suit (It was permanently new, my Skin was constantly absorbing mana and regenerating very slowly) only for the cold wind to nearly bowl me over and send me back flying into the building. I righted myself and lent slightly into the wind. I took a couple of unsure steps out into the wind before a loud voice assaulted me from behind and above me.
"WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE THE TELEPORTER, SIR?"
I looked around, noticed the large strip of open space open right in front of me, along with fancy buildings lining the side of the street alongside the one I'd just exited from, each one unique with its own theme and style. Behind me lay the Mages Group Institute, looking like a huge skyscraper, all silver with blue tinted windows, and in the higher windows strange colours were being thrown out along with broken glass and in one case a person, but even with my enhanced eyesight I couldn't be sure. I did a full 360 degree turn without figuring out what had been speaking to me.
"Hello?"
"UP HERE SIR." I cast my eyes up to realise what was talking to me. It was the building. And of course it had the voice of an old English butler. Only two windows slightly wobbling like an old person's eyes squinting gave me any indication that what I was speaking to was alive.
"Out of the city, if you would." A couple of windows moving closer together was the only indication that I had that the building was frowning.
"DUE TO YOUR … STATUS, YOU ONLY HAVE ONE FREE TELEPORTATION AT YOUR DISPOSAL, THIS WILL BE CONSUMING THAT. DO I HAVE YOUR CONFIRMATION THAT YOU UNDERSTAND SIR?"
"... Very well." With no further warning the air around me distorted and I appeared several feet off of the ground. My status? Whatever it currently was, it was probably shit, as that was what I'd just landed in. I was outside the city. In a sense. After I'd received my Level Up, I'd received another wave of new information, like when I'd entered the Mages Group. This wave of new information included photographic information, including maps of the city, local hunting grounds and more.
The map I'd been given was of a huge circle, a gigantic wall, higher than the tallest buildings in the city except for one of course.
Nestled up against the wall was the city, with its own wall, along with its own sentries and gigantic gate allowing free passage to and from at any point in the day. Outside of the city, the land was cut into strips and sections called hunting grounds, each one huge and almost as large as the city itself.
I went to the stage 1 hunting ground. I was curious how much stronger I was going to get in the wild, as compared to my growth in the Institute (the place I spent a week training in). Did they speed up my growth? Or was I just naturally good at this? I had to know, which was part of the reason why I went alone.
The part of the stage 1 hunting ground that I was in was composed up of a cave underground, beneath the main hunting ground area. There was some bioluminescent moss which grew sporadically but in most places it was pitch black, meaning there was a consistently high number of new lv 1 deaths. The fact that there was another underground area as part of the Stage 1 hunting ground, doubled the effective area of the hunting ground without actually becoming a Dungeon.
The topography of this underground area mainly consisted of evenly spaced rock spires, with a 3m radius of clear space around each one. On the ceiling grew some patches of bioluminescence which barely illuminated the ground. This place was inhabited by two species, one which was highly abundant and one which was extremely rare. Knolls which were the abundant species owned this ground, not humans. Knolls were a species that naturally grew to lv 3. They could form eggs of their kind through pure mana, but they required zero knoll influence and care in any way or they would emerge stillborn. So the knolls produced hundreds of thousands of eggs a day, which they left here. They emerged from their eggs at Lv1 and slowly grew while moving to their natural home which was in the Stage 3 hunting ground.
I took the main Entrance in which was just a dark hole with dirt steps, and travelling with me were other Lv1 soldier (the name given to recruits which were given a class, but were not yet level 3) NPCs. I actually had no way of telling the difference, and I didn't have any desire to. I was here to play alone. It would be safer though I thought as I watched a group of 6 walk past me along with torches, which wasn't necessary as there were torches along the path which was set out for you. Unless they were planning on going off the path? My eyes widened but so did my smile. Idiots. The torches would destroy their night vision while basically putting up a flare for all the knolls saying, 'Here I am!'
The walls had a spiral pattern, looping around me, probably left by the Excavator which had been used to make this hole. They had switched to using Excavators from the Mechanics instead of using Elemental Mages as they had done before, due to cheaper cost. They had to redo or move the entrances around for all of the hunting grounds constantly as it could apparently encourage a Raid if the monsters learnt where the entrances were, where all of the available monsters would rush into the lower level hunting grounds, completely annihilating any soldiers that were in the area.
The group which passed me had reached the bottom, which I could see below me, and instead of taking the clearly lit path ahead of them they headed off into the darkness to the right, with their flares all lit up.
The brightly lit path which the knolls would naturally gravitate to was due to these orbs on sticks which were lighting the path because if a baby knoll did eat one they would gain a burst of condensed mana, which was what these were and they would grow to a Lv 2 instantly.
Unfortunately for them the sticks these orbs were mounted on were coated with a resin which could make a Lv 2 stick to it just by touching it lightly. It was still risky for the soldiers despite the free food this situation seemed to offer. Only one knoll at a time would get stuck and most knolls would stay away from the path, afraid of the bright lights. So no combat stats were gained in this process and only cores at a very low level. That's what most of the NPCs in this place were working towards. They could be used to exchange for currency as you entered the city.
Most npcs were here for cores, they were a ticket to a better life. Even though I didn't need to sleep with this body if I was just carrying out my daily activities, I wasn't leading a regular life. I was going to be engaging in gruelling battles almost constantly and because of this my body was going to get tired. Sleeping, as troublesome as it was, was something I had to plan out. I had to choose a suitable location, If I slept on the streets someone belonging to the criminal class was likely to stab me in my sleep and take my belongings. Those belonging to such a class gained stats quickly from doing such things, although they had a very high mortality rate.
In addition to that, from what I Knew the loot system in this game was quite scarce as opposed to other RPGs I'd played. You had your main weapon and your Skin. You couldn't get bonus Stats from your weapon or Skin as well. Your weapon had a damage value and that was all. You could however find minerals or special cores to feed to your Skin, giving it resistance to various attributes.
I followed the group, making to stay out of sight, if they made me, dressed as I was in a full necromancer suit they would obviously guess my intention and possibly kill me for it. It was fairly easy to stay out of sight, due to the high number of rock pillars all around me. I didn't look at them much as I wanted to preserve my night vision. They walked at a steady pace keeping in formation, but also chatting and laughing at the same time. I heard what they were talking about and realised these guys were actually pcs.
They had two warriors with swords, one person with handguns, one thermodynamic mage who was wearing an all red suit (thermodynamic mages Skins color would change shade depending on what types of spells they chose to learn), so mainly fire spells then, one guy with a wrench, and one girl with a crow mask on. They were either really rich or were renting the game to be playing this early before second-hand copies were available on the market.
I heard a scream from the mage as a knoll I'd seen coming suddenly 'sprang out' in front of them, and shook my head. How did these idiots make it past the Institute? I circled round and watched curiously as a small monkey with small horns growing out of its head and forearms, attacked them. It came in swinging at their waist as that was the highest it could reach. The two warriors looked like they knew what they were doing keeping it a swords length away from them and trapping it. Unfortunately this set it off, seeming to make it angry and it started roaring at a low pitch in contrast to its small size. The guy with the wrench got nervous or bored and came in swinging, he missed his first couple of swings but on his third swing he hit it on the temple, shutting it up and knocking it out.
The damage was done however, I could hear faint roaring all around which grew louder with every second. The group finally got into a real formation, with everyone around the mage, the girl with the mask disappeared up into the darkness without making a sound. The guy with the wrench threw something up onto one of the nearby pillars, they seemed experienced so I cracked my neck and decided to influence the end result, to make it more favorable to me.
I sent a fire bolt from my glove at that drone what, I assumed was a Mechanic had left up there, destroying it. I could see two baby knolls had attacked one of the warriors and the Mechanic was looking around for what had destroyed his sentry.
I ran in a direction no knolls had come from yet and fired my shotgun once in the air, I could see something moving in the corner of my eye, rushing in blindly so I knew I'd done a good job and moved around the group in a circle and fired my gun two more times. I retreated and stood back to watch my handiwork. Really what was obvious and what they should've realised based on the Knowledge that we all shared was that knolls were very light and sound sensitive.
If you were going to fight one down here then you would want to kill it as quickly as possible and if you couldn't do that then after you killed one you should quickly run away. Also carrying a torch was stupid. Although without light melee classes found it difficult to fight, but a good warrior is supposed to be able to react to any circumstances, and if they had wanted to they could have bought a skill which let them see in the dark.
The number of baby knolls that were attacking the group was steadily increasing as more knolls came flooding in attracted both by my shotgun blasts and by the sounds of fighting. I estimated that if they all fought effectively without my interference, they could maybe handle 12 baby knolls at once. They were currently fighting 15 baby knolls. I decided to step in and speed things up. I approached while yelling.
"Hey! Over here!" There was a sufficient number of corpses around me for me to be able to be effective. 6 baby knolls saw an unprotected human on his own and decided to head for him. I raised my hands and poured mana into my soul, it resonated with the corpses around me, which began vibrating. As they got within my range I yelled out,
"Bone Structure: Bone Cage!" Bones slipped out of the corpses around the group easily as if sliding through water. They formed a circle around the surprised knolls, which quickly built up in layers, according to my hand movements.
"Mage!"I yelled at the woman in the red suit and pointed in the hole at the top of the cage which the knolls were trying to climb out of. The spell wasn't that draining on my mana, I just didn't have much of it so this one spell took 200 mana even though it was just a support spell. I could try to make the cage 'inhospitable' but it could kill me according to the description of the spell.
Bone Structure - 0< Mana.
Allows the user to manipulate the bones of nearby corpses to form a structure made of bones, has a varied mana cost. Do not use Offensively.
"Alek!" Her yelling caught the attention of one of the warriors.
"Get inside and keep them busy." She gestured at the cage and the knolls trying to climb out and nearly succeeding.
"Rahul will snipe them off, you just need to hold their attention for long enough." The warrior just nodded and with a leap I thought might be a skill, jumped in the hole at the top, dragging two of the knolls down with him.
Unlike me who embarrassingly yelled out my spell (A spell was just using mana with Intent, using your words to capture your intent, if a spell was below your level then just your intent was necessary, not words), she muttered hers. A tiny ball of white flame spun into existence above her head and dove towards my cage slipping in through the hole in the top. She did something else, I wasn't sure what and the ball expanded quickly. Then it exploded sending everyone there flying, including the knolls and the warrior inside. I was smacked into a pillar taking a bit of damage, 10% of my health.
The warrior who was already looking bad while bleeding from several locations (when you reached less than 50% hp, then you would display physical wounds) didn't get up and I could see his soul lose a lot of its light. He was dead but I hid my smile. I yelled out,
"Do you mind if I turn his corpse into an undead?" The other warrior yelled back,
"You a player?" I nodded.
"He was an NPC it's fine, that's the whole reason we killed him, he was getting a bit too clingy."
The mage cut in on his behalf while smiling at me. He scowled at her while nodding at me after briefly hesitating. I ran over to the corpse while the mechanic ran over to guard me, Ironically he threw another sentry at a pillar above my head while smiling at me. I was going to just raise his corpse as an undead and then sabotage them all, but when the mage told me he was an NPC I got a better Idea.
Instead of forming an arrow out of my soul and jumpstarting his to turn him into an undead, I connected his soul and mine. His spectral form appeared above his body while staring at me intensely.
"Hello there."
"..."
"You didn't top up your Revive account did you?"
"Sarah needed the money, for that Remote Detonation spell." He looked shocked that he told me the truth.
"I'm a Necromancer, you can't lie to me, being a ghost and all, it is one of the perks."
"Fuck off." I stopped smiling as it was clear he was having a bad day on what was one of his first excursions and continued.
"You have two choices, you can either be revived as a puppet or as my willing slave. Both work for me."
"Fuck off." I continued in a lowered voice as I didn't want the mechanic to hear me.
"These people don't care about you, they willing sent me over here to Raise you." Something I'd gained after my Class was some small knowledge of Necromancers. Warriors considered it the greatest sin to allow a Necromancer to use their corpse after death and when they entered into a party, they always made the party swear to abide by that belief. As a warrior, Alek took this perhaps more seriously than them killing him and betraying him, I was counting on this sense of betrayal for his mind to weaken to the point that I could take advantage of it. I gestured to the Mechanic, who was fighting off 3 baby knolls with the help of two sentries.
The ghost's eyes widened.
"The mage and the warrior both said it was okay to do this."
"Andrei said that?"
"Yes." I urged him a bit more.
"These people exploited you, they killed you and now they want to desecrate you?"
"I'll help you get revenge. On all of them." He was still hesitating. I tried to sweeten the deal.
"You spend a lot of time in the afterlife, but as my thrall you'll get a lot of benefits. Real respect and power over the others down there, when they eventually die, they'll be yours to play with." They were pcs so when they died they would just have their character deleted if they hadn't topped up their Revive account, but he didn't need to know that. He nodded to himself.
"I'll do it."
"Repeat after me."
"I swear my undying allegiance to Leonardo."
"I swear my undying allegiance to Leonardo."
"I swear to be his tool and never disobey him."
"Wait I thought there was a section about you promising to treat me with honour and respect."
"Just say it." I increased the pressure on his soul, distorting his perception of the world and increasing his admiration of me, just enough to get him to say the words.
"I swear to be his tool and never disobey him."
I wrapped a strand of my soul around my fist and stamped him on the shoulder with my mark, which was just an L in Curvature. His whole soul started to blacken, spreading out from the soul mark, going from a calm and peaceful light blue to a deep black almost blue color. Behind me, the mechanic had killed two of the knolls impressively but unfortunately, another four had joined, and his now 3 sentries one of which had a propeller didn't seem to be helping that much, covered in scratch wounds he yelled over his shoulder
"Any minute now?"
I pulled at my soul forming a strand, which I willed to become an arrow, I fired that into the warrior's corpse, who then got up, but dropped his sword. His eyes had gone that black-blue color and his wounds stopped bleeding. Now that the Aleks soul had left this body, all that was left was a husk, much dumber than a normal undead and could only use its muscle memory to get by. I sighed, I forgot he wouldn't be able to use his sword, as my Undead Rise skill leveled up the body would recover more of its memories and I would be able to resurrect more than one monster at once. Of course, that didn't matter with this undead anyway as there were no memories to recover.
My mana was at a good level of 850/950 as my Wis stat was quite high so I recovered my mana fast, at a rate of 70 per minute and I'd just spent several minutes contracting Alek. I then summoned the Dark Knight that I had just Contracted.
'Ding'
'Dark Knight Alek has arrived in the Living plane'
My hand stretched out above the ground, black smoke swirled up off of the ground forming a pillar of smoke reaching my hand. It dispersed quickly forming a black spectral figure wearing a black suit like mine. I needed to level up the skill to give him better equipment. I passed him his old sword.
"I feel… powerful, master!"
"Good, I'll need you to command my forces on the front lines."
"Very well, I wil-"
"It wasn't a request." I watched the black smoke press his forehead against the dirt floor and apologize. I smiled.
I looked over at the mechanic who was still alive surprisingly, he'd gotten a jetpack from somewhere and had picked up the guns from the dead gunner and flew above the baby knolls shooting at them. I raised 5 dead knolls who came over and stood by my other forces. I waited 3 minutes before the Mechanic was finally pulled down to the ground, despite putting up a hell of a fight. If we went one on one … I'd win but the fight would be impressive. I made a mental note that Mechanics got stronger as the fight went on and that if I ever fought one I should try to finish him quickly.
My mana was at 390/960, my Intelligence had increased apparently. I really wished I could use corpse transfiguration on the 5 knolls in my forces, giving them the same stats but the bodies of humans, to make it easier for Alek to control them, but I'd chosen to instead pick Excited Bones as I thought it was more helpful.
Ten knolls saw us and rushed over, my forces were armed with knoll horns which had fallen off of the corpses and one sword. And me. I liked our odds. The knolls weren't coordinated, but my subordinates were. We formed up in a circle around me at Aleks prompting. Alek had gained a new skill after becoming a Dark Knight. Dark Slash. He used it to great effect keeping the knolls back as they hesitated to touch the black residue his sword made, which just floated in the air, crackling with black energy. One problem with that though.
"Alek, you need to let go of your sense of values! These," I gestured to the undead around us "aren't your comrades that you're fighting with anymore! They don't matter." I could see my words had some sort of effect on Alek as he stopped attacking and withdrew to the center of the circle with me. He waited until the corpses trapped an attacking knoll before using Dark Slash.
As soon as his blade hit the knoll, all of the black residue in the air was sucked in towards the knoll. Its whole body spasmed and shook before going black and curling up. It was paralyzed. I held the undead back and let Alek have the kill. He leveled up like a normal RPG now, which meant he got stronger from killing and fighting whereas I purely got stronger through fighting.
I raised the corpse. The mana cost of raising it was reduced due to Dark Slash. I really wasn't supposed to have a Dark Knight at this point in the game I felt. To be fair it took up one of my free skills of which I only received 4 from the Guild and I was only allowed to have one at Lv 1. The number of knolls outside the circle was steady at 10 as more kept joining, only for the existing ones to die but my numbers kept increasing, and when they increased to 20, I cast my final spell.
"Excited bones!" I only had enough mana to cast it on seven targets but the effects were incredible. For 50 mana it lowered the Agility of the target by 80% for 1 minute. However it only worked on low level creatures.
"Charge!" My snarling undead were finally faster than the enemies and fell upon them like the tide. We got 9 of them, 1 of them fled with less than 10% of his health. Only 3 of the corpses were actually usable as in their excitement my group had tore apart a couple of the bodies. I'd also lost two in that fight. I was surprised to see the mechanic was gripping his old wrench and checked his status only to be surprised to see he'd recovered some 80% of his stats and partial memories. It must be because of the one skill the undead naturally possessed. Undead Yearning, if they killed enough they could recover 30% of their original stats and partial memories. I wondered how that worked since he was a player though?
"Well done!" The red mage and the other warrior walked towards me smiling, happy I'd killed so many of the knolls. Without me they would have died. I felt proud of myself before remembering I'd orchestrated this situation to begin with.
"Master." Ah well I guess I'll kill them.
"I'm really sorry." They stopped walking.
"Huh?"
"It's just I kind of promised Alek here that I'd help him kill you. I hope you both have your Revive payments up to date."
"Bastard."
"I thought you were cute!"
"Disperse!" A fire bolt headed straight for my head, I didn't try to dodge and took the hit straight on, taking off 400 hp from my total. I quickly built a bone cage around the mage, restricting her ability to cast spells. I built it close to her body which reduced the mana cost to 100. Then I tried something new.
"Bone Structure: Iron Maiden." The inside of the cage grew thick with spears made of bone as they formed out of the bone walls, puncturing her body.I heard the mages screams and then saw her soul disappear as it was whisked off by the Revive corporation. I wasn't in a position to be doing much though as I underestimated how high the mana cost of that spell was going to be. The notification read -10,000 MP
'Ding'
'You are suffering from mana exhaustion. Mana recovery reduced by 100% for half an hour.
300hp has been lost.'
I can't say I didn't expect this I thought to myself as I lay on my back, collapsed on the ground. I
looked at my blinking health bar, it read that I had 50 HP left
The description of the skill says that the bones move according to the soul's will. Bones inherently are made to prevent loss of life, so making them form with the purpose of killing something increases the mana consumption drastically.
I rolled over on to my side to watch the fight between Alek and Andrei. Is that a Warrior group thing, naming all of their members in the Russian way? The warrior was having difficulty dodging the Dark slash, as once he did dodge it he then had to attack Alek from a different direction, or risk being paralysed, he probably didn't know what would happen for sure but he didn't want to take a chance in a life or death battle. He also couldn't run away as the undead had formed a ring around them and just stood there silently watching.
I was concerned, Death Knights didn't have MP they just had two times the amount of HP, so every time Alek was using Dark Slash he was consuming a small amount of hp, 1% I think. His natural hp regeneration would mean that he would be regenerating 1% every minute but he'd been leaning heavily on that ability since the fight began as his stats went through a major downturn after he lost his body. He'd gotten back a little bit of what he lost thanks to my help with power leveling him earlier but he wasn't back to his original power level.
Since I'd gotten back 120 mp since the fight had begun, I prepared to cast excited bones to even the odds and pumped mana towards my soul.
'Wait.' I heard Alek's voice in my head. I was surprised, taken aback and a little pissed off, in the skill description it said that I would be able to give my death knight commands mentally, not the other way around.
'Please master, I know you lied.' I was preparing to cast the spell anyway but his voice stopped me in my tracks. S**t, did he know I orchestrated this whole situation.
'I know now that Andrei didn't give permission for me to be killed.' But how could he possibly know?
'Andrei told me immediately, but that still doesn't excuse what he did. He knew that I was no longer of any use, so he gave up on me. You never gave up on me. In fact you chose me from all the other dead warriors down here. Me, somebody who had low combat experience and low stats.' I could tell him that the soul leaves the body a few minutes after death, so all the other corpses down here were useless, but he seemed to be quite emotional right now. Also from what I'd seen, he didn't seem to be that great of a warrior so I was regretting my decision partially.
'I am undead but I am not any eviller because of it. Everything they told and taught me at the Warriors group was wrong. You are a necromancer but not evil, mostly. I am willing to fully devote myself to you master.' I sighed internally, this child (He was less than a month old) had gotten something very wrong.
'You idiot.'
'What? Master I thought we were having a moment?'
'There is no good and no evil or any of that shit, just do what you want, when you want. Damn the consequences, damn the world if you have to, just live your life the way you want'
'Master… '
'What?'
'Thank you master. You are right'
I looked up to see Andrei with his sword held high and Alek on the ground, my speech was probably too good and it had made Alek lose concentration.
I cast excited bones which I'd been holding onto for the last minute or so, it hit Andrei and his sword slowed down enough for Alek to dive out of the way. I got up off the ground and marched over to Alek who was hurriedly pulling himself up off the ground, where part of his body had collapsed away into shadows because he'd used too much hp using Dark Slash.
"You are dismissed Alek, grow strong in the world of the Dead and learn how to properly use your new body so this shit," I waved in the general direction to Andrei who'd gone red from exertion in trying to move faster to kill me. "Does not happen again. I'll leave him alive so you can get him at a later date."
"Bu-" I cut him off with a wave of my hand and he collapsed and swirled into the ground. I turned to look at Andrei kneeling on the ground who had a grin on his face.
"Wha-?" This time I was cut off as I felt a pain in my neck.
'You have taken 5000 damage'
'You have died'
I turned my body around to look at who'd killed me. It was the girl with the raven mask. I could see her grinning under her mask. It was the girl who'd disappeared at the beginning of the fight who I thought had runaway by now. She was waiting for her chance to help out her teammates when I appeared and started killing everyone. And I just threw away my best defence against her by un-summoning my death knight. Well jokes on you bitch. You think you stop a necromancer by killing one?
This was probably one of my favourite features about being a Necromancer which I hadn't expected before choosing the class, but made me happy that I had done so. Necromancers Last Rites. It meant I could abandon my body after death and possess someone at equal or lower Lv than me for 1 min. I choose you! Raven-mask Lady.
My soul hurtled out of my body and into hers, but unfortunately, it made me/her gasp.
"You alright?" I quickly thought about what kind of tone a raven-mask lady would adopt, I chose casual.
"Yeah, fine. Just leg cramps." I saw him struggling to get up, probably the last vestiges of my brilliant spell, so I quickly took her dagger out of her sheath and slipped it up her sleeve, while walking towards him.
"You need any help getting up?" 15 metres, 12 metres.
"Just give me a second." 9 metres, 6 metres.
"I'm fine!" I ignored him and his hand waving me away and walked onwards. 5 metres, 2 metres. He pulled himself up off the ground and raised his eyes to see my blue ones right in front of him.
"Wha-?"Dagger in the heart. I thought it was fitting that he died with the same words on his lips as me. I was actually surprised I killed him with one hit, so I looked at the specs of the dagger.
It had an option that could kill anything that was Lv 1 if hit in a vital spot while unaware.
I bet they took Aleks money just to buy this, a skill would be affordable enough to pay for by yourself, at least at our level. I was originally planning to kill myself with this, but then this girl would just revive with this still on her. Instead, I held each end with both hands and tried to bend it. I felt I could hear the girls laughter in the back of my head, this gave me newfound strength, or maybe something just snapped, either way, the blade broke in my hands, then to add insult to injury I stabbed the girl repeatedly in the heart with the broken end. She died with it hanging out of her chest. And me with barely a second left in my possession timer.
My entire vision went gray and a timer went up which showed that there was 2 hours and 40 minutes remaining, real-world time until I could log back in, that was equivalent to one day in-game time, which was slowly ticking down.
I logged out.
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Lightning_god
Lightning_god My longest chapter, so it took 3 days to finish. I feel like comments would be fun for everybody, so maybe try dropping one.
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