The Way of the Shaman [06] Shaman's Revenge

by Vasily Mahanenko

  The letter was so interesting that I decided to ignore the first rule of the web (don’t click on any unfamiliar links) and opened the video. Before me appeared the scene of Shaman Mahan’s last few moments in Barliona. My heart shuddered when I heard Anastaria’s voice again—a wave of hate for the girl and Leite, the leading players in my betrayal, swept over me from head to toe—and yet even through these overwhelming emotions I could see the image, the moral annihilation of the Shaman. Of me. Were I to encounter Anastaria right now, I couldn’t guarantee that I’d let her live, even if it meant spending the rest of my life in the mines. Finally, I watched myself sit down on the boulder in a stupor, waiting for the final countdown, and at last dissolve into the surroundings. Shaman Mahan had ceased to exist in the game called Barliona. At any rate, for the time being.

  The camera switched to a different angle to show the door to the Tomb swinging open. An enormous slab which Anastaria never managed to destroy, slid aside with ease, opening an ordinary passageway to a Dungeon. However, as soon as the passage opened and the players made their first steps in its direction, a star fell from the sky and turned into two angels—a white one and a black one.

  “The Creator has opened the Tomb!” roared the black angel, who—unusually for Barliona—didn’t have a name.

  “From now unto eternity this Dungeon shall have the ‘Original’ status!” the second angel echoed. “Any items found in tis location shall be Unique or Legendary! However, this status will apply exclusively to the Creator himself!”

  “Where is he?” asked the black angel. “Where is he who must receive the original key from us, the key to the most sought after place in Barliona?”

  “He is not here, sentries,” Anastaria replied, bowing her head. “Having opened the Tomb, the Creator was overcome with rage and hate for this world and abandoned it forever. You cannot give him the key…”

  “You speak the truth!” the white angel exclaimed with astonishment. “How could the Creator begin to hate this world having just managed to open the passage? Who shall receive the key in his stead? Was the opening really in vain?”

  “There is one here who is allowed to receive the key,” Anastaria went on and pointed at Barsina. “Here she is! Give her the key! She can replace the Creator.”

  “It is confirmed!” announced the black angel. “Barsina is permitted to receive the key. And yet we are patient! If the Creator does not appear before us within a month, the key shall be given to Barsina and all Free Citizens will be allowed into the Dungeon. However, anyone who attempts to slip past us until that time, shall be immolated! That is all!”

  “Please forgive my impudence,” said Anastaria, “but if the Creator doesn’t appear before the deadline, will the Dungeon lose its status?”

  “If the Creator does not appear before us, we shall declare Barsina the Acting Creator! The Dungeon shall retain its status and twenty sentients, including Barsina, will be permitted to enter.”

  The angels fell silent, guarding the entrance to the Tomb with their immense bodies and, suddenly, Anastaria and Hellfire who had been standing next to them flew toward the entrance. And, importantly, they flew there against their will as if some invisible force had flung them there—one powerful enough to send two of the game’s highest-level players flying. Plinto!

  Two curt swipes from a black wing and white wing dissolved Anastaria and Hellfire, sending them to respawn, while simultaneously the Rogue appeared behind them, cast a bloodthirsty look at the shocked bystanders who had gathered at the entrance and said: “All right you bastards, shall we dance?”

  I’d never seen such a crazed look on Plinto’s face. With his red eyes and black wings he resembled the Patriarch in his foulest of moods. The Rogue, or rather, the Vampire dissolved into the air and the players on the plateau began to vanish one after the other—Plinto began to avenge his leader. That was the end of the video.

  Staring at my screen blankly, I struggled to get a grip on what I’d just seen. After a short while, I noticed with some surprise that my hands were trembling and like Plinto all I wanted in this world was to personally grab each person who was there on the plateau by the throat, squeeze out their eyes and look on as the blood oozed from their eye sockets and their bodies withered to those of desiccated mummies. I couldn’t care less that there was no blood in Barliona—I’d imagine it myself…Hmm…Never figured myself to be so bloodthirsty, but what Phoenix did deserved nothing less.

  When I could think clearly again and the first wave of emotion abated, I tried to consider what I had seen.

  And so!

  Anastaria wanted me off the plateau as soon as the opening process was underway. She could have gotten rid of me in various ways, but she chose the most radical one—manipulating me to send myself back to the mines. If it weren’t for my composure, I would have definitely attacked the girl who’d betrayed me and found myself in the hands of the Heralds the next instant. Phoenix’s plan was perfect and had it come off as they planned it, I’d be toiling in the mines for the next seven years, reading notifications about how the great players of Phoenix had completed the Creator’s Dungeon. Well, tough luck!

  Ridding myself of my feelings about Stacey for a second, I occupied myself with another no less important question—who was the mysterious eavesdropper who’d recorded this video? A second watch-through did not answer this question—everyone I remembered being there was in frame—Clutzer, Leite, Magdey and the raiders. Consequently, the cameraman was one of the players who’d arrived to the plateau with Phoenix. This gives rise to a whole host of new questions, which I have no way of answering at the moment. Or rather, I could answer some of them—at the price of agreeing to ally myself with someone I didn’t know…How do I know whether it’s beneficial to me or not? Do I really want to ally with someone in order to exact my revenge against Phoenix? Do I really want to spend some part of my life in order to hurt someone? A quick glance at the video, which was looping before me, featuring Shaman Mahan as he was leaving the game (oh! I’m speaking of myself in the third person!), yielded the answer to all these questions—yes! I want this!

  Greetings! I enjoyed your demonstration of what you were capable of—a video recorded by one of the Phoenix players, your knowledge of my email address, and your knowledge of my real name. All this tells me that you have spent a significant amount of time or money on one thing—to speak to me. I’m open to a conversation. I can assure you that revenge against Phoenix is the highest priority for me. At the moment, I can’t fathom how I could harm them in some way. All of my thoughts on that subject seem rather unproductive. If you have something specific in mind—I’m willing to discuss it and work to make it happen. I’m fully behind depriving them of their hegemony in Barliona.

  Having written the letter, I already knew what I’d do next—I would no longer have to face Anastaria on my own. Let’s see who this guy is and what his actual goals are. In any event, I could be sure that Shaman Mahan would return to Barliona in the next five minutes! Anastaria won’t worry me any longer.

  “Character transfer in progress,” announced a pleasant feminine voice. Unlike the harsh metallic screeching that I had grown used to in the prisoner’s capsule, this voice did not cause shivers to run along my spine. “Object modeling complete. Player data synchronized with capsule. Logical network initialized—Anhurs central square. Character settings activation in progress…”

  A loading bar raced across my vision and I found myself looking at the settings screen. My Shaman stood against a backdrop of an enormous volcano spewing lava, smirking at the world before me, err, him. The Thricinian armor did a good job of accentuating my Shamanic class. The tip of the staff of Almis in my hands emitted a bright light. A small projection of a dragon flitted around my avatar, while behind my back, between me and the erupting mountain, stood an enormous dark-blue dragon—Draco. Only a week ago he was merely big—about three meters long, but a manageable size for a pet. Now, however, a mature, full-grown Dragon w
as looking out at the world from behind my back—from a height of four meters. I shudder to even guess the length of my Totem. I wonder whether he’s really grown this much over the past week or whether I’m merely seeing my Totem’s final form. Even in my Dragon Form, I’d look rather small beside him.

  The settings screen reminded me of my 595 unallocated stat points, and recommended I turn my attention to developing my character, yet in this matter I was still in full agreement with Anastaria—the higher the level, the more complicated it’d be to grow. If there was some problem or necessity, it’d take me a second or two to pump everything into Intellect, but right now it’d be better to leave these stat points untouched. There was no pressing need.

  I didn’t bother looking at my settings—I already knew them by heart. But before entering Barliona, I opened the inventory tab. This listed everything that belonged to me as a player, including real estate. I’m curious to see what I’ll have to work with…

  There were 6.6 million gold in my inventory and 36.4 million in the clan treasury—all numbers that made my heart constrict in my chest. While I was sitting in Barliona as a prisoner, I didn’t have to think of money at all—even my personal bail—the 100 million—seemed like an insurmountable sum. I couldn’t believe that by selling the Eye, my castle, the Chess Set and everything else I had, I’d earn such a sum. Admittedly, the castle alone was worth much more than 100 million, but finding a buyer prepared to pay the fair price…I had my doubts that I’d be able to sell the castle for more than 50 million. People with those kind of means were snug and safe in their own castles, while newbies would hardly permit themselves to spend so much money. It was I—Richie Rich—who could afford to dump almost twenty million on hiring personnel for my castle. Back then, Barliona was my only reality, while gold was simply game currency—not real money. Now, however, with 43 million to my name that I could transfer to reality and forever forget about having to work a job, worry about bills as well as all the other myriad perils of life, I experienced a surge of confidence. I don’t need to look for work, traipse around company offices and struggle to prove that my time in the mines had been a misunderstanding that would not happen again. In a sense I had accomplished one of my goals—even two—I had been released from prison and I had enough funds to live on. As a result, I am within my moral and financial right to spend several months on dealing with Phoenix the way they deserved to be dealt with.

  The castle remains mine and is located—I even opened the map trying to figure out where it had ended up—right on the border with the Empire of Shadow, not far from Barliona’s inland sea. It seemed that Viltrius had had quite a scare, since he’d sent Altameda to the other end of the continent. But all right—I’ll wait three months and transfer the castle to a more populous place. The important thing was to make sure it was safe. In this matter, like it or not, a crew of NPCs wouldn’t be enough. I’d have to recruit some players.

  As a matter of fact—on the topic of players!

  Checking one more time to make sure that my personal inventory no longer contained the Chess Set, the Eye or the squidolphin scale that I’d found in the Oceanic Abyss, I opened the ‘Clan’ tab. I looked at it, hummed with surprise, looked at the description one more time and hummed again because the current state of the world did not quite gel with the one I’d come to expect.

  The clan currently had 4,388 players, most of whom were at the rank of Recruit. About 400 players were gatherers, another 150 headed by Eric were craftsmen, 50 were raiders headed by Clutzer, while the clan deputy—like the warden of a nuthouse—was Plinto. Neither Barsina, nor Anastaria, nor Leite were listed in the Legends; however I couldn’t for the life of me explain how a clan that a week ago had at most 400 players now had four thousand whose average Level was 155. I mean, this must be some hallucination…

  The next tab in the Clan section informed me that the financial mechanism that Leite had set into motion had gone on ticking like clockwork even in his absence. Altameda’s storehouses continued to be rented out for storage, resources and goods were being traded back and forth, and the accounts ledger informed me that 1.8 million gold had flowed into the clan last week alone. Here, it’s worth noting that Leite had factored the costs of the castle and its NPC personnel into the daily clan expenses. And still the clan remained in the black!

  No, but I must be hallucinating!

  Clicking around the various tabs in shock and utterly befuddled since the last thing I expected was this kind of news, I finally reached the ‘Properties’ tab. Here I had to stop because I decided that everything that was going on was no more than the fruits of my overexcited imagination and I’m really actually lying on the floor next to my capsule, drooling deep in Dependence Level Black. How else do I explain how I managed to become the owner of a town called Bulrush in Lestran Province? According to its description, the reforms that Leite had instituted in the three villages placed in my charge had borne their fruits—during the two months, the villages had grown threefold and several days ago had passed a resolution consolidating them into one municipality. Four days ago, the provincial Governor, with whom I enjoyed Exalted status, approved the villages’ petition and the three locations ceased to exist on Barliona’s map. Instead, they were replaced by a town which was now one of the major locations for steel smelting in the Empire—after all, the Elma mountain range was a stone’s throw away from Bulrush. The descriptive text ended at this point, and yet it was clear as day that I needed to urgently choose an official from among the locals and take care of the tax issues. And that meant the taxes due to Lestran—as well as the ones due to my clan. After all, missing out on an extra source of income…

  Blast! What’s been happening in Barliona during the week that I have been absent?

  “Welcome to Barliona,” said the settings system as soon as I pushed the ‘Enter’ button. I couldn’t explain what was going on without being in-game, so I didn’t feel like contemplating the meaning of life any further. It was time to act. The settings screen vanished and the Anhurs central square rose up right before my eyes.

  Shaman Mahan was back. The time had come to seek revenge.

  Chapter Two. Return to Barliona

  “Greetings, student,” said Kornik’s sarcastic voice as soon as I materialized in the central square. A litany of notifications began to stream past my eyes regarding increases to my reputation with the Malabar Empire, the Shamanic Council, the Emperor, the Governor of Lestran and a whole bunch of other NPCs. My castle was in a different location, I needed to choose a head of the settlement in my charge, the Guardian of my Castle’s new location was waiting for me to pay taxes for using his lands…There were so many notifications that I didn’t even have time to read them meaningfully enough to react.

  “Greetings, teacher,” I replied, swiping away the wall of text blocking my sight. I’ll deal with them later.

  “Come with me. They’re expecting you,” Kornik held out a green paw.

  “Who?” I couldn’t help but ask and only then understood that another class-specific scenario was awaiting my attention. If the Council wishes to meet with me, then as soon as I enter the game, a script is launched informing me that the Shamans have already been in session an entire week, deliberating how best to describe the new quest I had to do. I wish I knew what it was.

  “Whoever,” quipped the goblin and took me by the hand to whisk me away. Before we left the square however, I managed to hear: “Why that’s Mahan! He’s the one who…”

  It was only upon reaching the Astral Plane that I realized that I didn’t feel a thing. The cold light and sweltering abyss that made me writhe every time I’d been here earlier, were no longer there. The pressure I felt from the Supreme Spirits’ presence was gone too—as well as the subconscious terror of slipping from the dividing line and hurtling deep into the embrace of the light or the shadow. I was playing with the sensory filter all the way up and I couldn’t say that I was pleased with it. I got the impression that some part o
f me was missing—like it had been turned off because it was unnecessary, and yet it was this part that completed my being. I’d make sure to look into this issue tomorrow and see whether I could turn off the sensory filter entirely. I really wouldn’t want to play with these kind of settings.

  “SHAMAN!” thundered the darkness and the air around my avatar froze, triggering a system notification about a slight amount of damage taken from the heat. Before I didn’t even notice this, figuring the darkness was ‘nice’ in that it saved me from the freezing light, but now I understood that these two elements could not be ‘nice’ by definition. They were the Imitators of the gods for whom both players and NPCs were hardly more than bugs. “WE HAVE BEEN MONITORING YOUR PROGRESS, SHAMAN!”

  “Oh Supreme Spirits,” I replied respectfully, slightly bowing my head. I had assumed that I was being taken to a council session, since it never occurred to me that Kornik could act as the messenger for the Supreme Spirits. “You wished to see me?”

  “WRONG QUESTION! WE HAVE BEEN MONITORING YOUR PROGRESS, SHAMAN!” the Spirits repeated, evidently wishing me to play the ‘guess the song based on one note’ game. As a prisoner, these kind of encounters with their constant allusions and hints drove me nuts, so now, no longer under any restrictions, I decided to test the degree of my freedom.

  “The Spirits do not wish to speak with me?” I raised an eyebrow inquisitively, focusing my gaze right between the spots of light and dark. “Why am I here then?”

  “WRONG QUESTION! WE HAVE BEEN MONITORING YOUR PROGRESS, SHAMAN!” The Spirits growled once again and a notification appeared informing me that I’d lost 50% of my Hit Points. If it weren’t for my sensory filter, that would have really hurt!