Chapter 106

 

 

 

Duel with a goblin shaman, and also an imp summoner

 

The fight continues...

We kept focusing harder and I asked stopped responding.

By now Asakura has calmed down a bit further since she has caused our lack of proper concentration to make me have to recast the runic shielding spell on both of us more often than should have occurred.

The imp summoner is basically channeling all kinds of power out. He’s been summoning non-stop. His moves are practiced and agile like he’s done this kind of chain casting a million times, despite the extremely long chain cast made up of incremental casts all put together. He’s been through mage duels before I realized. He’s also confident enough that he isn’t trying to hide in the shadows. That means he’s obviously expecting to be unbeatable.

If he thought we were more evenly matched wouldn’t he go for sneaky hiding ambushes?

He’s still not able to pass pulling through six imps at a time consistently every time he does a batch of summons, thank goodness…but he’s pretty close to it.

Perhaps that’s like the limit of how much he can do within such a short time?

But we have to be sure before we bank on that.

Does he lack offensive magic, I wonder?

We have to find his weak spots!

I’m sure most people would say summoning imps non-stop is as offensive as it gets but there doesn’t seem to be any other energy weapons or nuke magic for which I’m thankful.

To focus entirely on summoning he’d be invincible if he could do both that and throw out lightning bolts like the imp mage that was killed. It gives me the shivers thinking about it.

Like before Asakura has managed to use the huge steel body shield, which is now covered in long scratches from the imp’s claws despite being made of a metal surface. Their claws are so sharp to be able to actually mark up the metal. She’s able to stop them and keep them slowed to the point where we can take them on. But she has to keep really good concentration on making sure she meets their frantic dives and mid air swipes, which they are very good at.

Will the dwarves let us keep the body shield?

I like this tool.

Asakura, my guard, often will switch into using one of them as a bat after grabbing one of them by the neck. She quickly has to break their necks because of their sharp nails being so long but it works in quickly thinning them down without losing offensive power.

We’re lucky that their bodies dissolve or our weapons and clothes would be drenched and hard to use. I realized that there’s a science to not slipping on gore and guts from things that are splattering all over the place. We still do have to work on not slipping on some gore still though, because it takes some time for the bodies to dissolve.

Our kills on the small war imps keep racking up, but they keep coming.

And the little buggers are in a state of frenzied madness and seemingly unaware of their own mortality, which adds to them being a bit scary to fight despite their size.

But out of the corner of my eye I’ve caught the goblin shaman doing something strange. There was a strange sparkle from before. I’m not entirely sure what I caught a glimpse off. There’s something there.

What was it?

What did he just do?

I had stunned one imp and then parried another while Asakura is facing three of them. Then I used the paladin holy light on both the stunned and two others.

Wow that was much quicker.

All three imps that were right in front of us are now burning to death. But even while they are dying they don’t go very quickly and so I have to still dodge their lashing out in anger and painful rage of the damned about to go to hell.

Hmm…paladin holy burner is getting better. But it’s still hard to manage now that I’ve become closer to a demon in my biology, though my appearance on the exterior still hasn’t changed yet.

I’ve manipulated it a bit to resemble a flashlight cone light emitted from the hands facing forward and palm up with a short burst instead of a light radius. This is my first time attempting to do so. It’s a good trick to do it this way because it makes me less vulnerable to getting surrounded. It had been an on the spot. It also minimizes my chances of burning myself…to a point.

By keeping the technique working currently as a burst there’s an energy trade off. It’s not perfect but I save energy overall by not keeping it out the whole time. H

owever, because it’s a short burst that is clashy and a bit more violent the color of the light particles is a hazy almost fiery light blue and its energy cost resembles the same color while being hard to control with flaring. It’s not too costly still but I’ll have to be careful with it. It’s efficient in that I’m able to dispatch a lot of imps very quickly.

But to use it almost paralyzes me with pain after the first couple of uses. The hazy almost smoke like blue fire that was mostly dissipating after release had somehow travelled up my hand and wrist almost to my elbow before I put out the spell. There’s a smell like burnt skin in the air where the smoky haze is leaving my hand’s skin. I’ve got a mild but clear indication of a burn there. It’s not a third degree burn yet, but it’s still pretty painful…probably it’s barely at the tip of a second degree burn with welts and blisters already forming.

PAINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!

Burns are the shittiest kind of pain imaginable.

Oh gosh…it hurts so bad I almost threw up from the stress and nearly fell over. It’s also like the feeling of glass piercing every bit of my skin to over half way up my elbow. The smoky haze dissipates and I use a flash heal on my arm. The pain floats away with the small heal, which I spread out and then add some more. But when the energy of ‘the heal’ comes back I have to spread out another heal over the same area. It’s like a ten second ibuprofen. The pulse it seems is at first temporary and when it’s trying to leave I can feel pain trying to seep back into my skin.

I was burned by my own spell?! This is clearly a much stronger burn than the ‘warning signs’ I’d seen up till now too.

I’m a bit scared by it.

Weird.

I didn’t expect it would get stronger in working against me. But I can’t just give up that skill, since it’s too valuable. My other skills aren’t even close to having this type of power when facing evil.

After going over the first three imps and burning them I freeze in my tracks. I want to use it to get rid of the other three, and we don’t have a lot of time before the other goblin shaman’s imps that he is currently summoning will be sent over here.

I forgot that I don’t know what effect will occur if I use the paladin burner around Asakura…

Since her body is changed and is based on mine, will she also be damaged by it with burns like me if I activate it too close to her? Normally its flashlight ray of light beam would pass over or through humans but in this case I’m not sure if that will still hold true.

I will have to look for another window of opportunity. In the end I’m forced to avoid using the paladin skill next to her to eliminate the other imps. My arm really likes the cool down time though.

While we keep moving I watch for another window of opportunity.

But to finish the goblin shaman quickly…requires us to kill his summoned followers as quickly as possible. That means this battle will hurt a lot and probably be one of the longest battles I’ve been in. I will likely have to use the paladin holy burner at least two or three other times near the end on him alone. That thought has me quite scared of what my arm is going to end up looking like at the end of the battle.

Asakura manages to kill two more before the other six arrive, which means we’re dealing with all seven of them.

“Is this the best way to deal with this?” Asakura huffs trying to hurriedly rest a few seconds before the others close in on us.

“We just have to outlast his mana in attrition. It’s a battle of who will use up all their power first,” I said.

“OK, got it. But Shun, dogfights in real history from our world…sometimes had heavy casualties. If you can find another way around just throwing all your energy at each other exploit it,” she said back with no complaints and nodding.

“Got it,” I answered back.

“I believe in you Shun,” she added while staring down the imps.

“Thanks.”

“This is so weird though. It’s like my body automatically knows what to do. It’s like I’m sort of watching a movie from my own eye sockets. That autopilot thing kicks in when it’s like time to fight,” she said.

“Eh?! So that’s why you are so chatty?” I finally guessed.

“Well…there’s nothing…wrong with being chatty,” she defended.

“Don’t tell anyone, but by becoming my familiar, you now have demon blood in you. That’s why it’s not like before. It’s partly why your body is able to have such crushing strength on these things.”

She frowned, “I still have my agency and freedom though right?”

“Of course? This isn’t the time for that talk!” It wasn’t a lie right? I’m not sure I completely understand it myself. Even after hearing the explanations and all the talk with Fox it really does appear that Asakura has done a lot of what she prefers and likes to do…the way she walks around and looks at things the last few days does resemble how the old her used to do things. It gives me a headache to figure out where she starts and where the pheromones start however.

“Are you sure? How do I have agency if I’m your familiar,” she asked while swinging away at the imps.

“Actually that’s a good question. I don’t think it takes away your freedom of choice but just influences making you want to help me more than anything else in the world. It’s like got some hold on amplifying certain other desires too,” I said.

“Ah, I get it. So I’m like seduced to follow you no matter what through sex? For some reason sex seems to interest me a lot right now. But I don’t ever remember having a sex drive before even. But now it’s like it’s off the scale by football fields worth of distance,” Asakura said aloud.

“Does that bother you?” I asked slowly.

She sort of deflected the question a little bit defensively. “Well…I happen to have had a healthy interest in what marriage and family life …and sex…would have been like before this all happened though I wasn’t active sexually at the time. I suppose that I’m not completely changed in some ways…But it does appear my thinking about sex and obsession with it is very difficult to control right now,” she said with a feverish look in her eyes.

“Really? Like how?”

“Well it’s like I can’t stop thinking about having sex with you. Even while fighting I’d really rather go find some alley to pull us both into,” she blushed. She almost dropped her equipment.

Wow…I hadn’t expected her to say it aloud. It’s kind of bold to say even when it’s the truth. I think I accidentally had a sad look in my eyes.

I quickly use the paladin burner and ignite four of the imps, which went just for me. That’s different than before. Usually most of them went for her, so I warned her as such.

“I’ll do better and concentrate more,” she hurriedly said right after. Now if anything she’s like trying to be a wall in front of me. She was trying to kind of do that before, but somehow she’s put way more willpower into it and she’s desperate to not even let the imps look through her to see me.

Damn it!

It’s so painful my arm is numb after that last burn. My arm is killing me.

I’m lucky I have magic, or this would end up being a game over probably from disease if I survived the battle.

I risk two more magic heal pulses.

I also realized that the mana cost of a spell increases slightly when under intense pain, probably from my conciousness struggling to hang on!

This is costing more energy than I like but we don’t have a choice in getting rid of them before they can swarm. I realized a long time ago that anything more than about five imps around us at a time means we will get pulled down and killed.

But to have four of them dying fast is making the goblin magic user scream more profanity at us from about fifty feet away. He doesn’t like us messing with his ‘children’, and has even screamed something about that more than once.

“He’s kind of fanatical about those imps isn’t he? There’s no way he could be the father of those imps,” Asakura’s eyes narrowed.

“I agree. But they are both ugly,” I said.

“But not the same kind of ugly huh?” she countered.

“Let’s just focus,” I said.

“I can’t help it. I feel so good to be back!” She is somehow energized but wipes some sweat off her face.

There’s about ten seconds of silence again before she’s talking again.

“That guy sure is obsessive isn’t he?” Asakura noted, seeing he’s still screaming for his children to skin us alive and burn us to death. Wow goblin talk is like someone with angry swearing and brain seizures mixed into one, I think as we observe it.

“You know not even the orcs would burn people to death. This is kind of worse in a way,” she said again.

“That’s a terrible way to go,” I agreed.

All I have to do is outlast his mana…I told myself again.

But sweat is pouring down my head from the stress.

I know I’m right on paper...but I also have to deal with knowing Asakura is gambling her life on my calculation.

We keep up the war of attrition slash dog fight for another hour…

I can’t believe he’s held on this long!

Both of us are sweating like mad and tired. The goblin mage still has plenty of magic. We’ve been burning up with sweat.

Asakura is starting to tire.

I get more worried.

“Something is wrong Shun. He’s…too confident,” Asakura said with narrow slits for eyes full of cunning as she studies him. She’s still batting away at imps. To slow them down, and control the flow she’d lately been just swinging her shield around at any of them that got close, with me staying behind her. We’d also had to adjust our tactics recently, when they’d taken to trying to dive bomb us.

The dive bomb attacks are the riskiest and most dangerous to us. They will sometimes pull back and do a suicidal dive straight at us through the use of strong yet nimble wings for their small size. It has the potential to particularly lash out at our faces and eyes. They’d almost clipped Asakura’s eye more than once and even my own a few times.

“Careful! Watch your eyes!” I’m in half panic worried about Asakura since she means a lot to me.

But that type of attack also had tremendous risk for the imps. They’re trying to do suicidal dives meant just exactly that. They were coming at us so hard that three of them in the last hour have broken their own necks in the process and about four others ran into the stone wall buildings when we barely dodged in time. For the purpose of this fight evading and defense are more important because of the way the suicidal dives are handled, and the goblin shaman doesn’t care about losing a few sacrifices in the process.

Her voice flipped something in my head. I heard and felt what she said profoundly.

“You’re right. He should be sweating like a pig. He’s a little bit more tired but nowhere near our level,” I said, my lungs heaving in exertion. Going this long it feels like I’ve been running a marathon and I feel a bit lightheaded.

I should still have about forty percent of my mana…but if it stays like this…

Even while we kept fighting he was still summoning more imps. But he’d at least had to reduce the number of imps down to four at a time.

“Shun, he’s got something. I’m not sure what it is. But my eyes can’t miss the details. He’s holding something valuable,” Asakura said urgently. She’s pointing at him quickly in the lull between imp attacks.

That’s when I caught a glimpse of it. Something was sparkling on a chain around his neck.

Why didn’t I think of this before?! I should have noticed before but I was too busy worrying about keeping us alive. Is it some magic device?

“Crap.” You’re right. He’s got some kind of mana storage device,” I said.

“Eh? There is such a thing?” Asakura is astonished.

“I think so?” I’m a bit puzzled myself. It’s taking time to tell what exactly what I’m seeing. How do I describe it?

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well I’m not an expert…but that’s what it feels like. It feels like he’s like…I don’t know…but…it’s like a feeling like he’s carrying a well of water, except it’s not exactly water. So relying on my gut that means probably a mana storage device, I think?” I replied. Sensing magic is like this in how it feels? I hadn’t met a lot of mages so at first I’m confused at identifying it.

“That means he’ll never finish running out of steam,” Asakura reasoned.

I frowned.

She’s definitely right. We have to adapt.

“We have to rush him then and put everything into the chance to rush him or we’ll never get out of here alive,” I said.

“Eh?! Are you…” she’d about to ask are you sure, but then she was sure of it in her mind. “You’re right. We have to settle this before we get too tired. If we reach a critical point in fatigue, even if you still have mana he could just push us and we’d be so tired we’d fall over like dominos,” she finished.

That reminds me…is it possible to create a spell for ‘healing’ fatigue? I can’t think about it now, but our current predicament has made me think it’s possible. Would a spell for healing fatigue make someone truly invincible and unbalanced too?

I lock my thoughts back on what’s going on ahead of me.

“So let’s do this,” Asakura got ready to rush him.

“Wait, we have to draw the imps away from him. Then I’ll teleport us within killing distance while his imps are too far off. Since he’s already got the fourth being summoned right now it’s the best solution,” I said.

Suddenly we ran in the other direction while the imps are rushing us. We could technically get dimension door jumped next to him now but only fifty feet away from him won’t do much for buying time.

The goblin shaman is still screaming that rough profanity filled language of grating metal. He’s also puzzled why we’re running. He instead of chasing us pumps out a fifthy and a sixth imp out which catch up with the others that are chasing us. Then he’s sending them off all at once.

This is …a pretty good plan.

We keep running till we’re about three hundred feet away from him. There’s barely enough room to do so.

Then I activated the dimension door while holding onto Asakura’s hand to bring her with me.

It worked! He’s also defenseless since we’ve drawn the imps away from him.

Or so I thought.

I hadn’t anticipated that Asakura might get ‘airsick’ instantly and that she wasn’t used to this type of jumps. I’d had practice but she hadn’t at least while being ‘awake’. Plus I hadn’t had this ability very long.

She’s temporarily bent over defenseless trying to not throw up.

The goblin attacks and I have to use my weapon to parry him from chopping straight at Asakura’s open neck. He would have surely have landed a critical hit on a critical point necessary to stay alive.

Weird.

He’s not just a magic user…he’s also got some warrior abilities.

Of course a goblin would need both just to survive living with his own kind!

I am suddenly forced back in a flurry of hits he’s trying to score at me, but at least he’s not casting spells and summoning imps. He lands three gaping holes in my shield. I managed renew the runic shielding spell, just in time, but to do that he’d also put two more huge holes in its place.

“Get up!” I screamed to Asakura, who is still airsick. She doesn’t throw up but still. It’s partly my fault. I haven’t been able to show the others a lot of my skills yet or train them in effective team work because of trying to survive instead.

That’s all it took.

The demon control magic somehow compels her to get up. She intercepts the fifth hit in my shield that would have collapsed it. This part isn’t easy, like I’d thought. To be a goblin magic user he’d had to practice and train against warrior assassination attempts and other problems too. That makes it more complicated since he has a good sense of how things will go from his other experiences.

So his capabilities were better and stronger than ours were.

Asakura is barely managing to keep him off me but even with the massive metal shield, and with the runic shielding spell she can’t win.

I have to do better.

I can’t use the paladin light this close either with the three of us too close together. I’d tried to manipulate things and come in from behind but he was too clever and had seen that move before. Thus no paladin light for now.

I have to create an opening again.

I am still able to him with with a debuff. It slows him down considerably when I hit him with the -10% stats debuff, which is a reverse of the buff I’d had put on us earlier with my other buffs. Then I have to renew Asakura’s runic shielding before I can get another buff off.

Its tight work, but I manage to get it up in time, but soon I’ll have to do it again. And my mana is slipping away too quickly now. That part is very discouraging.

Right after that I hit him with the -10% movement speed and -1% attack speed. It’s not much help, but stacking things up should create some more time. It’s also a quick cast debuff that’s time efficient.

Crap…out of the corner of my eye, I catch the imps are already like halfway back here flying at top speed to protect their master.

I hit my stun ray just in time to interrupt the goblin shaman, who had been about to do an attack spell of some kind focused on me, and after having changed his normal goblins weapons for some kind of wizard staff that’s seeping black clouds of inky shadows in the air. The hate in his eyes as he’d been casting something big and offensive related gave me the chills. It wasn’t an imp summoning, so I felt grateful that I’d saved my stun for just the right timing. Unlike his spells mine are a bit faster to cast.

“Hurry, crush him! He just tried to cast an attack spell!” I yelled.

“Got it!” Asakura is already on him. She’s done a high jump to gain leverage by putting her weight in her swing and trying to come down hard with her weapon against him. The metallic ping as her hammer hits parts of his staff shatters it. The inky cloudy stuff that he’d been trying to leak into the air, and suddenly all of the awful poison like particles splatter and drop to the ground like some kind of black oil splattering his own clothes and the ground.

“He’s disarmed!” she cried out.

“Nice!”

This might just give us what we need. Even when he comes out of the stun he’s going to have to use a different back up weapon. The problem is that he has several weapons, which he’s even changed a few times in the fight.

We’re both pummeling the body with as many hits as we can before the stun wears off. She immediately crushes his arm with her war hammer, while I’m also hitting him from the opposite side. This is the only way we can both hit him while he’s on the ground without hurting each other or going in each other’s swing zones. He’d been knocked to the ground on the second hit from Asakura.

Because of the demon interaction on us, I notice Asakura’s hits are immensely strong. So that one hit was enough to knock him down and while he’s still under the stun he hasn’t cried out in pain yet.

But before the stun is almost up, I have to move fast.

“Hurry, I need to grab whatever that necklace is,” I said.

Somehow…the goblin is still alive. He has a magic shield of some kind up but it’s different than mine. While mine blocks all damage, his mitigates damage instead. Plus he’s got some kind of metal plated skin spell up, that I’m not sure exactly the full effect off mixing in with that. So he’s been taking a lot of hits but he’s not dead, nor is he even mortally wounded yet; which if it weren’t for those two spells would be totally unbelievable.

Crap…and there are three more of these guys lurking around somewhere?!

I snatch at the necklace, he’d had on earlier. That’s what the sparkly thing was that he’d been touching to cast. I grab that and his bag and with my dagger cut the leather strings of both the necklace and his bag, putting them in my own belt pouch, quickly taking them while he’s stirring.

He began screaming profanity at us then. What the hell?! He’s crying too? I can’t understand all his words but the necklace being stolen from him has him in uproar. What is he thinking?

We pummel him harder if that’s possible but his defense is really tough. We have to trip him while he’s in a suicidal rage. He finally goes down under a sweep of the legs from Asakura.

Then she lands a critical hit over his ribcage skewering him to the ground and he’s pinned and bleeding to death. Somehow that breaks the hold on his spells. The imps that had been sneaking up on us are now dissolving into thin air and his defensive enchants are foiled too.

“Quick, the finishing blow,” Asakura cried out for help.

We both know that he might pull of some other spell or try something unexpected.

But we hadn’t counted on intervention.

There’s a flash of black smoke and lightning while both of us are thrown backwards about ten feet. The shock of the power and being lifted in the air like a rag doll knocks both of us backwards. Both of our shields are damaged terribly, but we’re mostly alive and unhurt.

What just happened?!

I’m staring up at the eerie sky on my back.

I hear more sword and weaponry clashing as I try to pull myself up. Asakura is protecting me and guarding while my limbs are sluggish as I get to my feet.

Crap.

The other goblin shaman has arrived.

He’s also dressed similar to the other one, except the bone armor he’s wearing is dyed a ghostly white and red with extra symbols. And he also looks as putridly evil as the other son of a bitch.

“You got the round this time human. But we’ll be back with more reinforcements later after your gone from this place,” he said. I’m actually impressed because this one lacks an accent. His language skills are good even if it is through an enchant. Come to think of it, the language skills didn’t always stop accents from occurring where another race is concerned. Is that because the brains of different races aren’t totally on center with the language enchant?

We try to attack and stop him but he’s too good. He sends up a wave of power from his hand chanting something dangerous. So I pull Asakura back just in time where a wall of flames had formed a dividing line between him and us, where our feet were just a second ago. If I hadn’t grabbed her and pulled back we’d be getting burned badly right now.

It wasn’t that I was incredibly fast on my feet though; rather, I’d just felt what kind of magic he was trying to do and it had a long cast time. The other shaman picks up the other shaman roughly, dragging him by the arm.

“Nice save. We’ll meet again soon, I think,” he cocks his head to one eye with extreme hate and vengeance in his eyes.

Then while we’re figuring out what to do he casts another spell and walks through a door made up of what the night sky would look like filled with stars when you look at it. It’s some kind of door of twilight. Funny though, the door is still there, made entirely of some weird mix of matter and energy like a window in space.

Then they are both gone.

We’re standing there stupefied.

“What just happened?” Asakura wondered.

“I think he just got pulled out of checkmate,” I reasoned.

“So unfair,” she said with her hands on her hips.

“I know right? We had him. He was less than two seconds away from getting killed!” I exclaimed.

“But who was the other goblin shaman?” Asakura wondered.

“I don’t know, probably some kind of tribal chieftain, leader. They have military ranks and not just magic. But he was … or seemed more dangerous than the other guy. A wall of flames is pretty impressive. He has a fire element,” I whispered in awe.

“They both did seem to be wearing a lot of tribal leadership symbols and power emblems on their outfits,” she noted.

“Power emblems?” I asked.

“You know, like various types of symbols of authority that societies might believe proves legitimacy,” she said.

“Oh, right. I’m just trying to think how that would be different for goblins,” I said.

“Is fire magic really that good?” Asakura asked. She’s somehow staring at me and sizing me up.

I’m tempted to tell her it’s not but…it probably is and that would have been my ego talking. But I would think fire is difficult to control. Unlike other elements fire is clearly not in balance with its environment. So wouldn’t a fire magic user have trouble dealing with that trait?

“Is that the exit?” she asked me pointing to the door with its vacant opening full of night sky.

“I believe so. But it looks like we’re staring at like something that leads into a black hole or space. It makes me reluctant to go through right away. I’m not sure if he had to have a special skill to control where the door ended up at,” I said.

“That’s a good question. But if he has fire element is that going to give him an advantage over us?” she asked me.

“Well…it seems that mages on this world tend to use the same types of elements in their spells. So if he had a wall of fire, chances are a big percentage of his other spells might be fire too. At least that’s what I’ve been told,” I said.

“Eh? So it’s like that?” she said.

“Oh you know, who told you anyway? Told you what exactly? You know I have this funny feeling you know a lot more than you tell us about,” she raised an eyebrow.

“Well…just a little maybe,” I blushed.

“Uh huh…so does this outside source have a name? Is it a girl?” Asakura’s eyes are tinged with a bit of jealousy and giving me a very intense stare. She’s giving me an aggressive look with her posture now too with it, with her hands on her haps.

Ah crap. How do I explain to Fox…I thought I had more time.

“Hmm well I do have someone that’s coaching me with magic. After we rest up and eat I’ll tell you more,” I promised sincerely.

“Good because I’m starved. You know human food doesn’t fill me up anymore? I know what I need,” she replied, licking her lips and staring at me.

“Eh? Really?” That’s …news.

“Sorry,” I added.

“What do you have to be sorry for?” she looked at me seriously.

“Well…I’m sorry that we got mixed up in all this trouble. I’m also sorry you’ve been affected by my demon genes or whatever it is,” I said.

She closed the distance easily.

“You know somehow…this…problem…it’s really messed with me. I keep having this fascination and day dream of having you suck on my breasts,” Asakura is turning beat red. “I can’t keep it out of my head and I don’t know why.”

“Well…it’s the only way I can eat,” I winked at her.

She’s already unbuttoning her shirt…which has been strained a lot fighting gravity during the last hour of fighting.

I think we have enough time for a quick feeding.