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

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “But Malabar…” the alderman tried to object, yet I had decided to take this situation to its ultimate end. Turning to the village gates, I said:

  “I’ll make sure to let the Magistrates know about my treatment in the Klarg Barony this very day. It’s not merely ignorant to welcome an Earl with pitchforks: It’s a flagrant offense to the aristocracy of all of Barliona. I will do as you command and depart this place, Sire Casheesh. Good luck to you.”

  “Wait!” The alderman switched to Kartossian. Ah! Another test? Casheesh no longer had an accent, as if Kartossian was his mother tongue. “There has been a slight misunderstanding!”

  “A misunderstanding?” I replied in the same language, indicating that I am perfectly familiar with it. “Is sticking a personal friend of the Duchess Urvalix onto a pitchfork a misunderstanding?”

  “The Duchess Urvalix?” Casheesh squealed in a forlorn voice.

  “Of course! I call upon the local Guardian as my witness—the Duchess Urvalix, who was formerly the Duchess of Caltanor, is a good friend of mine.”

  My hundred points of Attractiveness with Tavia played their part now and a bright aura surrounded me, finishing off the alderman. He collapsed to his knees and howled pitifully:

  “Mercy oh Master Earl! Do not allow me to perish!”

  Following the alderman’s lead, the rest of the village dropped their gardening implements and collapsed to their knees, begging me to restrain my wrath and not mention this affair to anyone else. They offered money and goods and even the prettiest girl in the village as a handmaid to my castle, yet I shook my head to it all, realizing that I really hate it when people beg me on their knees before me. It’s simply repellent!

  “Is there really nothing that will allow the honorable Earl to forget about our mistake?” When the alderman ran out of arguments, which I was quite happy to see, Casheesh addressed me with the look of a beaten dog. Stifling another urge to raise him to his feet, I replied:

  “There is. Information. I need to find out what has been happening to the cows of the Priests of Eluna.”

  “The cows?” The alderman’s astonishment wiped his pitiful look right off. “Why but that’s obvious—we’ve been taking them!”

  “Why?”

  “Because our earth is no place for dirty Malabarians. They’re not welcome here! Even if they are keeping the cursed ones at bay…Our Baron prohibited us from hurting the Priests, but he didn’t say anything about their cows.”

  “What cursed ones?”

  “Nearby lies an evil place. The beasts there are altered—a strange darkness surrounds them. The Priests keep the beasts away from our village, so no one harms them. But as for the cows…”

  “Don’t change the topic. Where is this place located?” I grasped at the thread that should lead me to the entrance of the Shadow Dungeon. Altered beasts is quite a sign.

  “Right here.” A map of our surroundings appeared in Casheesh’s hands and he pointed to a point about ten kilometers from Blue Mosses. “It’s been three years now since this evil has appeared. At first the Master Baron fought it on his own, but when the Priests appeared everyone sighed a sigh of relief.”

  “Then this is what we’ll do. You are to stop stealing the Priest’s cows and return to them all the cows you’ve stolen to date. You are also not to harm them in any way in the future. Now give me the map,” I added, checking mine. “And if you do this, I will give you my Earl’s word that no one will hear of what just transpired here.”

  “The word of an Earl of Malabar?”

  “The word of a friend of the Duchess,” I corrected myself. Looking at the villagers still kneeling before me, I added: “You may rise.”

  You have completed the ‘Missing Cows’ quest.

  “Accepted,” said the alderman, offering me his map. “Henceforth, no one shall do harm unto the Priests. Thank you, Master Earl, for your kindness and understanding. I suppose, we will go about our business—we need to find the cows and return them. There’re just so many things to do…”

  “Fleita! Enough mushroom picking for today. We’ve got some business!”

  “Finally! I was starting to think you’d forgotten your promise!”

  “Viltrius will summon you in a moment and send you to me. What’s up with the mushrooms?”

  “I only found half of them! These stupid mushrooms refuse to grow!”

  “Whoa!” said Fleita when she appeared in Blue Mosses and glanced at her map. “And what are we doing in this bleeping corner of the world?”

  The speech synthesizer that was installed in all the gaming capsules, blocked players under 21 from using obscene language, and yet everyone understood exactly what the girl wanted to say.

  “If you’re going to curse, I won’t bring you along anymore,” I said authoritatively like some grade-school teacher.

  “What do you mean you won’t bring me along?” Fleita asked with surprise. “Hey Mahan, why are all the locals looking at me so oddly? And what are all those pitchforks and torches for?”

  “To chase you out of town with, what else..?”

  “Oh! I’m always happy to see that. You didn’t tell me what we’re doing here though…”

  “Curiosity killed the cat! You’ve already earned your PvP status, I see.”

  “Dang! I wanted it to be a surprise—attack! It’d be the last thing you’d expect.”

  “Uh-huh, and later you’d be writhing in pain. Even if your sensory filter is as low as 90%, that 10% of sensations isn’t something to sneer at you know.”

  “You can say that again. Just remembering the time I used up all my Energy makes me shudder! By the way, what’s your sensory filter set to? Minimal? I mean, is it all the way down to 70%?”

  This question rooted me in place. NO! I completely fail to sense a difference between the way it was and the way it is now. I still feel the blowing of a cold wind, the smell of firs throughout the forest, and I’d probably feel the sharpness of the pitchforks sticking into my stomach. This doesn’t seem like 30% of sensations at all…

  Dear game administrators,

  Please help me get to the bottom of a little issue I’ve been having with my sensory filter settings…

  My inquiry to the developers went out that very minute. It didn’t matter that I was standing in the village gates. I didn’t care that Fleita was beside me shifting from foot to foot and glancing with concern at the villagers who had gathered to escort her out with pitchforks. I needed to understand why I’m still playing with my full range of sensations, as if my filter was completely off.

  “By the way, student, you never did brag to me about your Totem,” I recalled, as soon as we walked out of the village. “Draco told me such crazy tales about it that now I’m curious about what you managed to scrounge up.”

  “What were the crazy tales he told you about my little Bunny?” Fleita frowned.

  “Bunny?” I stopped in surprise. “You named your Bone Dragon…Bunny?”

  “It’s no worse than Draco,” the girl’s frown deepened. “He’s still very small and I only have three minutes of summoning time with him left.”

  “For today…There’s always tomorrow. It’s not like you’ll do anything useful with those three minutes today anyway,” I said. The girl’s words only served to pique my interest further.

  “All right, all right. Stop pressuring me—‘show me, show me…’ Well, here you go!”

  A moment passed and something appeared beside us. At first I didn’t even understand who or what it was—just a jumble of huge flying bones that whirled around Fleita like one of the spells that a Death Knight has. But when this jumble of bones stopped spinning, froze and looked at me—shivers ran down my spine. Two eyes flaring with a cold fire stared at me from a bare skull. The wings had a transparent magical field instead of skin to trap the air. And the four bony paws with long crooked claws looked like they could rip apart anything. Fleita’s Bone Dragon was beautiful and terrible at the same time.

 
“Hello teacher!” came a childish voice. It was so juvenile and thin that I replied without even thinking:

  “Hello Bunny!”

  The Dragon left Fleita and wheeled several times around me as if examining me.

  “You are so big,” my student’s Totem remarked and returned to the girl. “I am weary. We shall meet later.”

  The bony whatchamacallit vanished and an entirely different whatchamacallit set upon me with her questions:

  “What do you think? Isn’t he adorable? Do you have any idea how happy I was when I got him? I was squealing with joy! Mahan, you’re the best teacher I’ve ever had!”

  “Yes, he truly is wonderful,” I agreed with the girl. “How did you complete the trial?”

  “Oh,” Fleita blushed. “Kornik asked me never to tell anyone. He says that no one should know these things. Especially my teacher,” the girl’s white skin reddened with a blush and the Zombie began to resemble a living person.

  “So it’s like that?” I feigned offense. Fleita instantly backed down.

  “I can’t tell you in game! But no one can keep me from doing it out in reality. Tell me your number and I’ll call you tonight to tell you everything!”

  “It’s okay,” I smiled. “If Kornik asked you to keep it a secret, let it remain a secret. Let’s go and see what’s been haunting Blue Mosses.”

  It took us an hour to reach the location we needed. At first I considered simply blinking there, but then I decided a stroll would be nice too. I’m not much of a Shaman at the moment—I can’t fight and I don’t know what lies in wait for us up ahead, so it’s better to take it nice and easy. I’ll always be able to stress things later on. When the first Level 79 Shadow Wolf attacked us, it became clear that we were getting close.

  “You took me along in order to fight animals?” Fleita, who was at Level 73, asked angrily after she had dealt with the wolf. “You’re exploiting me!”

  “You need to grind a bit, increase your level,” I replied philosophically to the girl’s complaint.

  “You’re only Level 137 yourself!”

  “Not ‘only,’ but ‘already!’ These are different things entirely. Don’t relax just yet—there’re many battles that lie ahead. Replenish your Mana and on you go!”

  I did my utmost to help the girl, but my Spirits refused to come. I could zip around the continent all I wanted, I could chat with my student telepathically, but there were no Spirits to summon. None of the modes worked. My abilities were gone and that was that.

  “Erm, Mahan, are you sure that the two of us can handle this on our own?” the girl asked in a shocked tone after she had dealt with the tenth Wolf. Stopping at the edge of another glade, we were looking at a giant Oak with a bright, shimmering entrance to the Dungeon in its trunk. We had found our Dungeon! I doubt that there would be some other in this area. That just doesn’t happen. But there was this one little snag—the glade was also playing host to a pack of thirty Shadow Wolves all at Level 150.

  “Not anymore, no,” I muttered, glancing desperately around for some solution to this problem. This was bad, but so was the alternative. Any way you looked at it, everything was a negative. I didn’t want to share the Dungeon’s location with anyone. No one, at least, whom I’d played the game with. So in effect, this was a dead end, unless that is…Damn, well why not? I reached for an amulet I hadn’t ever used and made a call.

  “Speaking!” sounded a hoarse female voice.

  “Kalatea, how are you? This is Mahan from Malabar. Do you have a minute?”

  “Mahan?” the girl asked puzzled, and then added: “The Dragon?”

  “The very one. I need the assistance of your Order.”

  “I am listening…”

  We couldn’t complete this Dungeon on our own. There was no arguing with that. I had brought Fleita to bolster my hand in my dealings with Evolett—one more First Kill, unique for Kartoss, would mean a lot to him. But I didn’t want to invite Plinto and Clutzer with their raid parties—I’m not one to harbor a grudge but I also don’t have any problems remembering what they did. And finally I had no desire or time to recruit random players. The only way I had of completing the Dungeon (which I really needed to complete) was to invite a third party that wasn’t involved in the relations between the Legends and Phoenix. This left only Kalatea and her Shamanic Order.

  “What are your conditions?” The Shaman asked once I had finished my tale about the Dungeon I’d discovered.

  “You get a First Kill, and I get all loot apart from the gold. That gets divided by an Imitator.”

  “Three million per warrior for the portal just to get a First Kill…” Kalatea began, but I cut her off.

  “Several months ago I asked you to verify the possibility of a Harbinger blinking to a different continent. You said it was possible.”

  “Okay, let’s say I shuttle my group over to your continent. But in order to reach your location, we’ll still need a portal. Do you have an extra two hundred thousand?”

  “You don’t have to blink to my continent—I can pick you up from Narlak. At the moment, that area is off limits to players—the developers are up to something in there. But I can use it to blink to the Kalragon embassy in Astrum and pick you up. What do you think of my offer? All I need is your people and their coordinates.”

  “Will your student come with us?” Kalatea asked after she understood how I could reach Astrum. I was a Harbinger. Considering that she had designed the Shaman class, she understood perfectly well that you can’t become a Harbinger without a student. And once she’d heard my hum to the affirmative, she clarified further: “What happens if he’s killed? Have you put the Death Seal on him already?”

  “My student is not an NPC. She is a player. A woman.”

  “I need an hour to call everyone,” said Kalatea after an even longer pause. “And another three hours to get everyone to the embassy. You’ll also need about three hours to transfer everyone to the starting location. When do we move out?”

  “Are you bringing half of Astrum with you?” I smirked, imagining how much people we could transfer in three hours.

  “A Harbinger may not transport more than five people per hour. Either one at a time or everyone at once, but no more than five—however you prefer. I’ll bring fourteen Shamans and one tank. That’s my raid party.”

  “Will Antsinthepantsa come too?”

  “Of course! I had reckoned that she would become Harbinger much earlier than you. I guess I was wrong. I have one more condition—I want to speak with your student.”

  “No problem. She’s free to do as she likes. As I told you, she comes with us. Start assembling your people.”

  “Okay, I’ll send you the coordinates in an hour. Later!”

  The amulet went silent but Fleita—who had managed to stay tactfully quiet during our conversation—immediately fell upon me with a thousand questions. So I had to tell her how I met Kalatea and who she was. When I told the girl that Kalatea is the coolest Shaman in all of Barliona, Fleita emitted a sharp gasp. What a circus! The whole thing ended with Fleita pouting to let me know that she was offended at something. All of my questions were met with a single answer: “Everything’s fine!” So I calmed down and decided to leave the whole thing alone for a while. If everything’s fine, then it’s fine.

  “Wait here,” I pointed at a short oak. “It’d be even better if you signed out to reality and took care of your chores. Tell everyone that under no condition are they to bug you about anything for the next five to six hours. You will be busy getting another First Kill.”

  “Sure thing, dad!” muttered Fleita, and dissolved into thin air. No, she really must be upset about something. But what?! What is this, daycare? I tried one more time to be paranoid about Fleita, but couldn’t come up with anything: Despite everything Anastaria and Barsina had done to me, I still fully trusted my student and couldn’t make anything of her periodical fits. A person involved in some kind of plot simply couldn’t have become an Elemental
Shaman and be well on her way to becoming a Great Shaman the way she was. Logic said the opposite, but my feelings, premonition and everything else remained firmly on the side of this peculiar girl. The only truly depressing thought was that, one day, she’d become someone’s wife. And a wife like her could clean your brains in about ten minutes.

  The incoming mail notification rang. An icon indicating I had received a message from the admins appeared in the bottom portion of the screen and I couldn’t help but crack a grin. Look at that…how prompt of them! I opened my mailbox and was about to read the reply from the head honchos of Barliona when the list of the first ten items in my inbox drew my eye. Or rather not the list itself so much as a specific letter from a sender familiar to me: Kreel the Titan.

  Hey Mahan!

  It sure took you a while to make up your mind! At the moment, we have completed three Dungeon levels—that is, floors—and two remain. We haven’t reached the final boss yet. If you want to join us—you’ll have to pay, since I can handle the Dragon without you just fine. The price of participation is five million per player.

  Kreel, Last of the Titans!

  Why look at that!

  I even lost interest in the mail icon for the admins’ reply. Kreel is raiding the Dungeon without me?! How was this possible? I thought Renox clearly let him know that he has to take me with him!

  I still didn’t have access to Vilterax, so I did what seemed easiest at the current moment and got in touch with my teacher.

  “Kornik?”

  “I’m listening to you, oh student-with-no-abilities-to-actually-speak-telepathically-with-me,” the goblin quipped.

  “Why did Renox allow the Titan to kill the Shadow Dragon on his own?”

  “Because this matter no longer concerns you. You’re not going to Armard.”

  “I’m not going to Armard, but I need to be the first to kill the Dragon!”