Artem Vasilyev

In the not-so-distant future the computer game industry reaches its fullest flower. Virtual reality is indistinguishable from real life. The government launches Department C to control the game space. Censors secretly delve into games. Their mission is to take sex and violence beyond the forbidden level. A game that would let them do that must be banned. One of the Censors is a good guy who hates his bloody job. The other one is a creep. But even the Censors lose their ability to tell the game from the real world.

Returning to Saint Petersburg after a long exile, the dashing Yakovlev, a retired army officer, makes a comfortable living by winning other people's duels. An enigmatic, focused, and extremely skilled professional, he leaves a trail of dead bodies behind him as he swirls through polite society, frequently called upon to wield a pistol as a surrogate in duels at dawn. But when Yakovlev meets the naïve young Prince Tuchov and his beautiful sister, Princess Martha, the normally cold-hearted mercenary is surprised by hitherto undetected emotions. What transpires uncovers a series of revelations about his past and his present self.