ANASTARIA!
It was like I’d been hit by a lightning bolt. My consciousness returned and a cold sweat covered my body. Did it just happen again? I am Daniel Mahan and I am 33 years old. I’m a free man with Dependence Level Black, who hasn’t completed his rehabilitation entirely and who now periodically confuses Barliona with reality. If it weren’t for my hate of Anastaria, which still hadn’t been extinguished, then…Why does everything have to happen this way?
For the first time since I’d been released, my lucky stars had granted me the time, opportunity and desire to think over everything that had happened to me during the last few years.
The first thought that occurred to me was that I’d been sent to prison on purpose. The hacking of the waste collector Imitator had been arranged. Someone had wanted Shaman Mahan to appear in Barliona. Obviously I’m not paranoid, but I’d notice a spy creeping on my heels. Marina had confirmed my hunch. The girls really had played a major role in sending me to virtual prison. And this begged the question of why I should trust her now? She’d appeared so suddenly and just as suddenly told me her side of the story—and then even more suddenly asked to join my clan. That’s a lot of ‘suddenly’s.’ Well, to be fair, she did provide me with a solid idea—as soon as I return to the wider world, I’ll have to hire some lawyers to review my case. Good solid lawyers—not the milksop the government had assigned me. Let them figure out who’s right, who’s guilty and who was simply carrying the ammo belts. If they decide that Marina is guilty, I won’t lose much sleep over her fate. Three months of hell called Pryke Mine taught me the main idea—everyone deserves his just desserts.
By the way, on the topic of Pryke—they’d also tried to send me back there deliberately. Anastaria’s words in front of the Creator’s Tomb were calculated to incite me to violence, receive PK status and be sent away to spend the rest of my sentence with a pickax between my teeth. They’d stamped me as obsolete, having first relieved me of my resources, personal belongings and friends. Why did they do this? To gain access to the Tomb? To amass further virtual resources? This was the most perplexing thing to me, since it stood apart from the general logic. Anastaria couldn’t have failed to foresee that without my involvement the Tomb wouldn’t be as lucrative and the loot would be worse. And yet she still hurled me against the wall like a dirty sock. Had she reckoned on making a deal later? Then why would she want to send me to Pryke? It’d be too late to make a deal then! I have trouble believing that Stacey missed this part. Something wasn’t tallying here.
All right, let’s put Pryke to the side, since I’m getting off topic. I need to recall everything in order. In the course of playing the game, I managed to craft the Chess Set of Karmadont, which helped me acquire the Reputation I needed to leave the mines. This Chess Set instantly became a target for the Phoenix clan, which knew all about the Tomb. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to join their clan, Anastaria decided to join me. By the way—why didn’t I want to join Phoenix? I had no reasons for this, aside from some vague premonition that it would be wrong. If Anastaria had acted a little differently—like if she hadn’t used the Sirens’ Poison on me, smiled more frequently, stroked my hair a couple times—then I’d probably run to join Phoenix, forgetting all my duties to my own clan. But no! This girl, who is considered one of the top analysts in the game, did everything to ensure that the idea of joining her clan didn’t even occur to me. Yet another contradiction between Stacey’s image and her behavior. Why had she done this? The more I learn about Anastaria, the more certain I become that she never acts without a good reason. This means that she needed to keep me out of Phoenix for some reason. Quite an information gap here.
What follows is the scene in front of the Tomb’s entrance. Now if I discount the attempt to send me back to the mines, then this scene looks a bit too…Well, were I a theater critic, I’d start yelling: ‘I don’t buy it!’ The first thing they should’ve done was send me to respawn. Just in case. If the Tomb hadn’t opened, then I’d be revived, since I’d remain in my prison cell and then they’d apologize, saying something like ‘that was an accident, sorry, come on and open the Tomb.’ But no—they left me in one piece and preferred to destroy me psychologically. Did Anastaria need to do this for the sake of race bonuses? I don’t think so. It’d be much easier to slip me the information in reality so that I’d react in the way she needed. She didn’t do this, which means the idea was different. What was it? I don’t get it. Further—it’s unpleasant to recall my humiliation, but two moments really stand out: The Ying-Yang and sending me to respawn when I called Viltrius. Let’s start with the latter. A mere hour or two ago Anastaria showed me as well as a huge crowd of people that she is rightly considered one of Barliona’s best strategists. Taking a boss down to 53% Hit Points without knowing a thing about him ahead of time is quite a feat. So it’d be naïve to assume that Stacey had been so taken aback by the realization that I had an amulet of communication with my goblin that she only reacted and killed me after I’d told him everything I needed to. The logical conclusion is that Anastaria wanted me to hide the castle. Again the question: ‘Why?’ And again the answer: ‘It’s unclear.’ The Ying-Yang, according to Elizabeth, shows unambiguously that I love Anastaria. And that she loves me back. Otherwise the stone would be destroyed and we wouldn’t be able to speak telepathically. There’s no point in arguing with technology that’s easily capable of determining people’s feelings. Several dozen technical whitepapers confirm the capability of modern sensors to determine people’s dominant feelings: fear, pain, pleasure, melancholy, etc. I don’t recall whether love numbered in this list, and I’m feeling too lazy to get up and go over to the computer to look it up. Okay, it’s not laziness—I’m simply afraid to find out the truth. If Anastaria doesn’t love me and the software doesn’t understand this somehow, then I’ll be able to survive. Unrequited love and whatnot. But if she really does love me, then…No, I won’t go over to the computer.
So what do we have? I managed to pay my enormous debt to the government and gain my freedom. Could I have paid it without my contract with Anastaria which penalized her and others for leaving my clan? I don’t think so. If Anastaria had planned on poaching my players from the beginning, she’d never have allowed that clause in the contract to exist. And yet it was there in every single employment contract we had signed. It was thanks to these severance payments from my former clanmates that I had managed to make it out to reality. It follows that this was no accident, but a premeditated decision. Here we arrive again to our well-worn reprise of ‘Why…? It’s unclear.’ All right, there were minuses too—beside people and the drop in ratings, I lost a vast quantity of Imperial Steel. If we factor in the items that Anastaria had taken from me, we arrive at a pretty steep price. Even though I got the Chess Set back, neither the Eye, nor the Crastils, nor Eric’s first creation, nor the cards were ever returned to me. Perhaps this is all even on the balance sheet, but something tells me that my release to reality is a bit more important than some lines of software code.
And I shouldn’t forget the mysterious faction that wants to hurt Phoenix. They can’t do this on their own, so they’ve offered to serve as my instrument of vengeance. I have managed to escape their surveillance (by the way, no one’s managed to track me down so far) and now I can act independently. Together, we have a single goal—to hurt Phoenix. The main plan, suggested by the old man, is to incapacitate Anastaria and Hellfire. Plan B, suggested by me, is to blow up Phoenix’s main castle with three scrolls of Armageddon. In either case, we’d deliver a blow to the clan’s finances and its position in the ratings. Here, all I see are advantages.
So here follows a global question—what am I seeking revenge against Anastaria for? If we ignore the slight to my masculinity—the fact that the (only) female of my pride has abandoned her male—then really nothing terrible has happened to me or my clan. It could’ve if I’d ended up in Pryke Mine, but it didn’t. To the opposite, I’m doing quite well: I’m free
, I have money and I’m famous. So what do I need revenge for? What is the purpose of destroying the character known as Anastaria? Forget Hellfire—I never liked him anyway—but Stacey…She’s a symbol, and if I destroy her, an ocean of players will turn against me. I don’t need a fortune teller to tell me this.
The conclusion follows quite naturally—I need to speak with Stacey. And here follows another question—why hasn’t she initiated the conversation herself yet? Does she not need to have one? Even though the Ying-Yang remains whole? (I still refuse to go to the computer.) But why does Anastaria act like nothing has happened? Another cruel plan? Insanity. We need to speak—there’s no doubt about that, but we would speak on my terms. First of all, I need to complete my Dungeon and slip Anastaria the Tear. Then, I need to complete the Tomb of the Creator so that I can obtain the Salva. When the aces are all in my hand, I’ll be able to speak to Stacey about the reasons for her behavior.
It’s decided then!
One more question remains that I’m not quite ready to answer—what should I do with the Armageddon scrolls? Should I use them to destroy Phoenix’s castle? Pay Barsina back for the work she did lifting my clan into the top thousand? A judicious idea, what can you say? Evolett gave me those scrolls without a single question. He even suggested I use them in a few weeks at Phoenix’s official event in order to do maximum damage to their finances and reputation. What is this? The struggle of two clans for their place under the sun? It’d make sense if they were in the same Empire, but the brothers had settled at a distance from each other. By the way! I shouldn’t forget that Ehkiller and Evolett are brothers! One brother taking up arms against another? As if!
The thing I feared the most had come to pass—I was doubting what I was doing. The idea of exacting a large-scale revenge against Phoenix already didn’t seem so well-justified, although it remained attractive: If I wanted to acquire even more fame, then incapacitating Anastaria and Hellfire would be ideal for doing just that. I bet I’d make some money in the process too. Then why the hell does Anastaria keep doing everything possible to make me hate her more? The hate with which a male hates a female, as I already determined. My psychological devastation during the opening of the Tomb, the interview during my initial absence in reality, her participating in that show about my clan, her humiliating me in front of the raid. Why does she need all this? After all, she can’t not understand the consequences of her actions and my feelings about them. I don’t get it. Of course, I could be grateful to her here too—it’s been none other than my hate for Anastaria that’s brought me out of Dependence Level Black three times. Still, there’s no way the girl could know this.
Or could she?
Damn! I really don’t understand what’s going on, but I know for sure that whatever’s happening isn’t what I thought it was. Everything’s become confused and tangled, creating such chaos in my mind that I just wanted to send everything to hell, delete my Shaman, give up the game and never enter the capsule again. I’m just not used to solving a problem with hundreds, if not thousands variables—of which one remains a constant: I am a Shaman.
I placed the Jeweler’s toolkit on the floor, stood up and walked toward the capsule in a trance. It was time to stop thinking! It’s all I do lately. My job is to feel!
ENTER!
The Anhurs respawn location was just outside of the city wall, just like in all of Barliona’s cities. I didn’t wait around for the guards to attack me and selected a location not far from Anhurs and blinked to it.
The blue waters of the Altair—the largest river of our continent—rushed from north to south to meet the ocean somewhere thousands of virtual kilometers away. I didn’t travel too far away, since right before entering my mad trance, one brilliant idea had occurred to me. It was time to deal with my clan. Having made sure that no one was about to attack me, I took a seat on the river’s bank, opened the clan control panel, brought up the reports configuration screen and began to work my magic. In order to make sure that I wouldn’t made some haphazard decision based on emotions, I needed a solid base of information. No one but Barliona itself could give it to me…
“Chikan, what’re you gonna do when you hit Level 200?” a voice sounded, distracting me from the clan rankings. Damn! I should’ve made a short overflight to look for any NPCs or players in the vicinity. I wonder if this is a PK zone? But okay, it’s too late to worry. I need to figure out whether Chikan and his friend are harmless or whether I should blink to another location.
“Damned if I know. Maybe I’ll drop out of school, start working in Barliona full time. If things start looking bad, maybe I’ll try to marry Stacy Kumin—remember her? I showed you a hologram one time. Will you be my witness if we tie the knot?”
“With Kumin? Yeah right, bro,” laughed Silkodor, a Level 155 Rogue. He and Chikan, a Level 173 Paladin, were engaged in what had to be the most useless activity in all of Barliona—they were leveling up their Fishing skill. The two buddies, since this is what they surely were, were sitting not far from me, casting their lines and periodically taking swigs of some Barliona lager they had brought with them. A nice little guy’s day out.
“Oh come on, John. What if some Raiders recruit me? Like the Azures or the Heirs for instance. Well why not?”
“Hah! Why not add Phoenix to the list while you’re at it?”
“Ah get outta here. Just look at Mahan—he managed to do it, didn’t he? He sure did. Why shouldn’t I give it a shot?”
“Mahan is the Corporation’s guy. Every fool knows that,” Silkodor remarked flatly. “Just last night I was arguing with my Vita about who dumped who—Mahan Anastaria or Anastaria Mahan. We almost had a fight over it.”
“I don’t know. I read that he’s an ordinary player like you and I, only he got lucky and we didn’t.”
“Got lucky? As if! You want to hear true luck? Vita mentioned this thing that happened at her job. One of her coworker’s got sick.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the guy died. For an hour. Some part of his heart gave out or something—I don’t really recall. Well anyway, they managed to resuscitate him—can you imagine? Vita says that during that hour the guy only lost like 10% of his brain and he’s still got a chance of living a normal life. Now that’s what I call luck. But your Mahan—he’s a ringer. No one’s that lucky—he was there at the Kartoss launch and he cleared out the Dark Forest and got his hands on a castle and won the hottest girl in Barliona too. Maybe only temporarily, but still.”
“My Stacy is better!” Chikan objected.
“She’s not yours yet. Listen! Why don’t we sing a song? It’s such a nice day, we might as well…”
“Hmm…All right! But give me a sec, I gotta pop out to reality.”
“Are you still using that old helmet? ‘Fraid the parents will start scolding you for belting tunes back home?”
“That’s why I’m about to warn them not to interrupt. Five secs!”
Hanging around to hear their singing was beyond my patience, so I opened the map, chose another location several kilometers away and once again activated my Harbinger ability. I still needed to administer the clan business.
Silkodor and Chikan had confirmed my suspicion that for many players in Malabar, as well as Kartoss, Mahan was a player of the Corporation. As a result, serious players wouldn’t join me. What’s the point of joining a clan that’ll never do anything new or interesting—since all the scenarios are already running and Mahan, the Corporate representative, is quickly fading into the shadows. Even Anastaria has left him! I need to highlight this point on my list. Let’s see, where’s my reports generator? I need more info…
“Eric, hi! Where are you now?” Once I decided what I’d do with the clan, I dialed the first player in my list I knew well. The recruitment firm I’d hired was populating the list with any contact they came across, so now I had a reserve of over 17,000 players.
“I’m in Anhurs, outside of the blacksmith’s,” the Warrior replied with some
surprise. I guess I was the last person he expected a call from.
“Wonderful! I need your help. Go to the commercial quarter, find a guild named MIDCons and give their employee an amulet for me. I need to talk to him.”
“Ehhh…Okay, I’m on my way. In the meanwhile, tell me, you can’t do this yourself, right?”
“If I could, I wouldn’t be asking you. I’m temporarily drawing aggro from any town guards—to the point that they want to kill me, not just lock me up—so I had no choice but ask you to help. Will you do it? Excellent! Tell them to call me as soon as they can! Later!”
After examining the growth curves for the clan’s membership, finances, spheres of influence, reputation and rating—which for a reason unknown to me placed the Legends as the 440th clan in Malabar—I realized that I wouldn’t be able to administer the clan on my own. That was a fact that I could not avoid. The clan’s profits were slowly but steadily stagnating, Altameda’s storehouses were slowly growing emptier, while our costs were only growing. Players were joining the clan, but they didn’t hang around for a long time. The average membership duration was two weeks. It took this long for people to figure out that no one paid attention to them, that no one arranged clan meetings, competitions, contests or for that matter even basic conversations in the clan chat. As a result, those who were impatient or didn’t care about their projections, left the clan. There were of course the veterans, but there weren’t many of them. That’s exactly what I needed to change.
The Way of the Shaman [06] Shaman's Revenge Page 27
