The Karmadont Chess Set (The Way of the Shaman: Book #5) LitRPG series

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “No limitations?” came the voice of the Totem, who had grown still all of a sudden. “So I can go to the library this very instant and stay there for a whole week?”

  “Goblins above! You two dimwits really do deserve each other…”

  “May I go, brother?” the excited Dragon turned to me. “I…I need to!”

  “Go right ahead,” I smiled at the Totem, yet by the time the last syllable had left my mouth all I could see was Draco’s tail vanishing in the busted out window.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to study a bit too,” remarked Kornik and summoned some kind of Spirit to repair the window. “You need to learn how to manage a castle properly and what your rights and obligations are as an Earl. As I understand it, you’ve been granted the governance of a settlement. You should read up on how to manage it properly so that you don’t find yourself up a creek, so to speak. You won’t even notice the two months fly by! That’s it for now. You may go. We’ve wasted too much time chatting here as it is.”

  Kornik simply disappeared, taking the chair he’d brought with him, and Prontho arched an eyebrow inquisitively as if wondering why I was still in his office. I had no choice but to mutter “thank you for the information” and leave the building. Sitting down on the steps, I tried to process everything that I had just learned. It turns out that all the major players of our continent, which, as I noted with pleasure, included yours truly, had been deprived of their powers for two months. This had been done in order to allow the remaining mass of players to catch up a little to the leaders—if not in level then at least in their involvement in the various events that the Corporation had arranged. I wasn’t about to go against the Harbingers’ advice and throw myself headlong with the rest of the players against Geranika’s Empire. My daily trips to Altameda to renew my presence there would cost so much money that Leite would end up suffering a stroke. So I really would have to stay in place and do some studying …

  “It’s no good!” I heard a girl’s plaintive voice. “This goddamn race. I’ll delete it to hell and restart with something more human!”

  “Anger will get you nowhere,” said one of the teachers.

  Typically, I wouldn’t have noticed this scene—students who were having trouble with something were all over Barliona. And yet these people were speaking Kartossian—on the Shamanic training ground in Anhurs, in the heart of the Malabar Empire!

  I could see two people near the pond, beside two trees which according to the lore had been planted by the Supreme Spirits themselves many millennia ago. I recognized the Mentor who had called me ‘Renegade,’ and a girl who outwardly at least resembled a human. The reason I say resembled is because the arms of this lovely creature were unnaturally white. Any race can have blue hair—but only vampires could have such pale skin. Had these toothy beings appeared in Kartoss, depriving Plinto of his claim to uniqueness? If I were the Rogue, I’d be a little miffed…

  Trying to make as little noise as possible, I crept closer and stopped ten paces from the pair. Apparently, the Mentor was teaching the girl how to summon a Spirit. He kept pointing at a training dummy and telling her to concentrate while renouncing the surrounding world. The girl was nodding her head—unfortunately I couldn’t make out her face from where I was standing—and waving her hands, freezing in place and even hopping around like a goat—all to no avail: Nothing happened and the training dummy remained untouched.

  “To hell with this!” the girl snapped after yet another failed attempt. She flared up and barked to no one in particular: “That’s it. I give up! Zombies cannot be Shamans! They’re not meant for it! I’m done.”

  A Zombie? Only now did I decide to check the girl’s properties: Fleita the Decembrist, Level 8 Zombie, no class.

  “Wait!” I managed to call to the girl who had begun to fade—she was leaving the game apparently with the intention of deleting her character. “Don’t start over!”

  “Why shouldn’t I start over if nothing works? Oh!” the girl faded back in, turned to see who was speaking to her and froze in place with a silly smile which revealed a row of black teeth. Hmm…yeah…Generally speaking, Fleita was an attractive girl—shapely and well proportioned—but her face…yeesh! Her face was chalk white, as were her pupil-less eyes. Her blue hair partly obscured her face just like in that ancient horror flick The Ring…Jeez…

  “Just don’t,” I replied to the flustered girl. There was a ‘no PVP’ marker hovering over her head which meant that this cute zombie was under eighteen and, therefore, this was the way she looked in reality, albeit with less ‘undead’ features…

  “Stacey, I have a question: Can a player start a character without choosing a class?”

  “That’s a new mechanic for new players. They introduced it with the Kartoss expansion. Until a player hits Level 10, he can try out all the classes to choose the one that fits him best. In other words, the tier one skills are unlocked for everyone. Why—did you meet someone without a class?”

  “Yeah, a very surprising phenomenon. Thanks for the information.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m probably going to pop out to reality for a couple of days. Then I’ll spend a week with Nashlazar. After that, we’ll have a day to ourselves. A telepathic kiss until then…”

  “So what isn’t working out for you?” I asked Fleita.

  “Well…I don’t even know how to explain it. The teacher wants me to focus and see the Spirit within, but…The spell itself is in the spellbook. When I activate it, an icon appears, but as soon as I cast it at the target dummy, something goes wrong! I’ve been at it for a whole week already!”

  “I see…Show me, please, how you summon the Spirit…”

  “You don’t get it,” forgetting her embarrassment, the girl adopted a more informal tone and began to explain. “The teacher told me that I can’t summon Spirits. I can only use the spellbook at the moment. It contains several spells from each class. For the Shaman it has the Spirits of Healing and Lightning. I can activate the spell and aim it, but it all falls apart after that.”

  “I understand. Show me!”

  “Okay. First, we activate the spell.” The icon of a lightning bolt in an orb appeared in the girl’s hand. “Then we cast it at the training dummy and,” as soon as it left the girl’s hand, the lightning bolt fizzed out as if it never existed, “the show’s over. Damn it all! How much more of this can I take?”

  “All right. I saw it. What does the Mentor say?”

  “Mentor?” echoed Fleita.

  “The one you call your teacher. What does he tell you to do?”

  “That I need to find this lightning bolt within myself and imagine that it appears in the dummy on its own. But for this I need to concentrate on my inner self. I understand perfectly well what he is trying to tell me—over the last two weeks I’ve read every forum post and guide and asked everyone I could…But it all comes down to one thing—Zombies cannot be Shamans. They’re not meant for it—they have limits coded in.”

  “But you managed to create the icon,” I reminded the girl.

  “Well yes, but when I was trying out being a Mage, I could cast the icon however I wanted too! I had all the training dummies convulsing on the floor, while here…I get nothing at all. It seems that I’ll have to start over with a different race, since I’ll never become a Zombie Shaman.”

  “By the way, why’d you choose a Zombie anyway?”

  “Because that’s the only Kartossian race that looks remotely human. I don’t have the money to be a Dark One and they’re charging now to transfer a character from Malabar to Kartoss…so Zombie’s all I had. And, I’d like to point out that only the first few minutes feel odd…after that, you get used to it.”

  “In that case, here’s the next question—what is a Kartossian like you doing in Anhurs? Especially at such a low level?”

  “There’s no one to teach Zombies in Kartoss. Rather, there’s no one to teach Zombies how to become Shamans. You can learn how to be a Warrior, a Dark Priest,
a Necromancer…whoever you want, but not a Shaman! Everyone I asked, goblins, kobolds, orcs…No one could help me. Then I watched the movies and decided that Shamans have a much better time of it in Malabar. And really, Prontho, who’s the boss around here, understood me right away…By the way! How do you know how to speak Kartossian? I’ve about lost my mind here trying to communicate with other players—no one understands me! They even wanted to attack me several times,” Fleita grinned, “the dumb brats…The guards immediately took care of them. You can’t hurt minnows like me.”

  “Prontho,” I reminded the girl, trying to bring the conversation back on topic.

  “What about Prontho?” the girl stopped in her tracks and looked around in bewilderment. “Is he coming?”

  “You were telling me that Prontho understood you and…?”

  “Oh! Right! He speaks Kartossian, so he assigned me one of the teachers who also spoke it and sent me to train. So I’ve been here two weeks already with nothing to show for it.”

  “In that case, here’s the most important question of all—why’d you decide to become a Shaman? I doubt you’ve wasted two weeks just to learn the principles of summoning Spirits. Why do you want to be a Shaman?”

  Fleita looked down at the ground without replying.

  “Okay, I see. Very well. Best of luck to you in your future endeavors…”

  “Because I watched the movies!” the girl blurted out with a defiant look.

  “That’s good that you watched them. But so what?” I failed to understand her point.

  “And nothing! When you were pulling Yalininka out, I felt like I was right there beside you! When you sank the dagger into Geranika’s breast, I was yelling at you to leave Kornik alone! When…I watched all seventeen Barliona movies, but only those two made me feel like I was in them. I…I can’t explain it, but I feel like I simply have to become a Shaman!”

  There was so much resolution in the girl’s eyes that I couldn’t walk away without trying to help her. The Mentor had frozen like a statue several meters away from us, letting us have our conversation, so I seized the initiative:

  “Did you try to form the icon directly inside the target dummy?”

  “I did. It doesn’t work. The only place I can get it to appear is in my hand…Okay, I’m sorry I bothered you,” Fleita switched back to a polite tone of voice. “It looks like I’ll have to be a goblin. But one way or another, I’ll become a Shaman! It’s a matter of principle for me!”

  “Don’t worry about bothering me, I have a lot of time on my hands at the moment. You should try to forget about the spellbook though, and summon the Spirit directly inside the dummy.”

  Even though the girl seemed determined to delete her Zombie and switch to a Goblin, I wasn’t about to give up. I was growing curious now: Were Spirits really inaccessible to Zombies or not? In the Dark Forest, I discovered an interesting feature of these undead creatures—the plane of reality they occupy lies parallel to the one the Spirits are in. The Patriarch had been unable to communicate with the Supreme Spirits and vice versa. Since I was now faced with a member of the Barliona undead who was eager to become a Shaman, I could use the opportunity to run some experiments—as long as she didn’t have a problem with it, obviously.

  “I don’t understand,” said Fleita sadly. “What do you mean by summon a Spirit? According to the forums, I need to enter Spirit Summoning Mode…”

  “Forget about the forums,” I interrupted the girl. “Just imagine that the Spirit has possessed the dummy and all you need to do is poke it. The only problem is that you have to do so at a distance.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Fleita was on the verge of tears. “What do you want me to do?”

  “The dead cannot communicate with the spirits, oh Renegade,” the Mentor suddenly said to me in Malabarian so that the Zombie wouldn’t understand him. “I angered the head of Council and his punishment for me was to make this girl understand—without showing her my irritation—that Zombies cannot be Shamans. They were passed over in this either by nature itself or that mad Mage that first created the elixir of revival. You should not torment her in vain.”

  “What did he say?” asked Fleita instantly. “He’s saying that I’m incompetent, isn’t he? I already knew as much…Okay, thank you, but…”

  “Silence! Stay right there!” I never thought that I could yell at other people, especially girls, but now for some reason it seemed like the right thing to do. The girl was taken aback and all but snapped to attention like a well-drilled soldier. “Take a seat here,” I pointed to the pond’s shore, “and wait for me! I’ll be right back! And if you even dare to delete your character, you may as well quit the game all together! Is that clear?”

  Staring at me wide-eyed, Fleita nevertheless turned around obediently and walked over to the bank. That was good enough for me. Now I needed to have a chat with someone…

  “Kornik, I need your help!” I spoke to the empty air. Even though they had removed my ability to communicate with the Spirits, they couldn’t keep me from communicating with my teacher…

  “You do know that your summoning abilities are blocked, right?” the goblin quipped sarcastically, appearing beside me. “How many times do I have to tell you—you’re not a Shaman right now!”

  “So how’d you hear me then?”

  “I didn’t.” A wide grin spread across Kornik’s face. “I was just passing by when suddenly I see my listless student standing there screaming his head off at no one. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn’t stop to find out if he was feeling all right in the head?”

  “We can deal with my head later. At the moment, why don’t you tell me whether Fleita can become a Shaman or not?”

  “You really aren’t feeling well, are you? Why don’t you take a nap in the shade there?” said my teacher with mock worry and even tried to hop up to feel my temperature. “You’re overheated, I see…How many times have I taught you to consider what you’re saying? How can a flute become a Shaman?”

  “What? Not a flute like the instrument…” I realized that the goblin misheard me and pointed at the Zombie. “Her—her name is Fleita…”

  “Heh,” grunted Kornik and began examining the girl with such interest that he even cocked his head. “Who would have thought that a zombie would decide to become a Shaman…What is the world coming to?!”

  “You haven’t answered me, Kornik,” I restrained my teacher from slipping into one of his lengthy digressions.

  “My answer…” the goblin began—but fell silent, struck by something that Fleita was doing. The girl had grown bored of sitting beside the lake. She pulled out a fishing rod and began to fish. A minute passed and Kornik sat down on the ground in the Lotus pose. He continued to study the little angler, as if he could see some profound meaning in her actions. Having grown accustomed to trust the wisdom of this Imitator, I took a seat beside him. If the time had come to observe—well, why not observe a little…

  Over the thirty minutes that I meditated on the girl, she caught only two shiny fish—common carp, according to their properties. There was nothing remarkable at all about them, and yet during the same thirty minutes Kornik hummed twice, both times after Fleita caught a fish.

  “Now I understand,” the goblin said at long last and vanished without bothering to explain a thing. Well, I tried my best, I guess…

  “Fleita,” I called the girl, “enough fishing. Come over here. Fleita!” I had to raise my voice since the girl didn’t seem to hear me at all—or simply pretended not to hear…

  “Eh? What?” she asked, looking around, as if not quite knowing where she was. “Oh, I completely lost track of time. What did you come up with?”

  “I’m sorry…” I began and shook my head, noting with displeasure the sudden ‘extinguished’ look in the Zombie’s eyes. When our conversation began, they were white, but as soon as I shook my head, a kind of gray dullness filled them.

  “Okay, I get it. In any case, thanks for trying t
o help…If I start another character in Malabar, will you let me join your clan? Your projections are pretty. I want one.”

  “Sure, I’ll let you join. Just write me and tell me that you’re Fleita.”

  “What—has our blockhead upset you?” Kornik said suddenly and clearly not to me. “He’s a good one to seek advice from!”

  “Excuse me?” The girl’s face expressed complete bewilderment.

  “I said, he’s a blockhead,” Kornik stepped out from behind my back and walked right up to the girl. “How’s the fish?”

  “Not great. Barely biting. All I caught was two carps.”

  “Considering that those would be the first two carps caught in that pond in as many millennia—then, yes, ‘barely biting’ is a fair assessment,” grinned Kornik.

  “What do you mean?” asked the girl still failing to understand the goblin’s point—as did I in all honesty.

  “My student will explain,” Kornik turned to me as if he could sense my confusion.

  It was pointless to ask the goblin dumb questions, so I tried to consider what he had said about the two carps. If they really are the first fish that have been caught in the pond, then…

  “Tell us how you caught the fish,” I asked the girl. “And I don’t mean in the sense of ‘I cast my line, saw the fish biting and pulled it out.’ I want to know about your feelings.”

  “Feelings? I…I cast the line and it was like…I don’t even know how to explain it…I had this feeling that I was transported to another world. One part of me knew for sure that there weren’t any fish here, but another part didn’t want to believe it, and stubbornly searched for the fish, reeling it in from somewhere far away…from some place that’s at once warm and pleasant and cold and chilly.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. The girl was talking about the Astral Plane, the abode of the Supreme Spirits! In spite of everything, she had managed to get through!

  “Yup, that’s roughly what I think too,” said Kornik philosophically, giving my reaction a mocking glance. “Looks like we’re dealing with another sentient who’s decided to ignore all the rules. So you wish to become a Shaman, my dear?”