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

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “You really are terribly greedy,” the girl concluded and asked: “Where to next? By the way, why haven’t you said anything about my new appearance? The Dark Legion outfitted me with some really cool stuff, but you act like you didn’t notice a thing! Some teacher you are!”

  “We’re going to the forest.” I did my best not to lose my temper with the girl—the grim impression that Beatwick had made on me was still vivid in my mind. I walked another hundred meters or so before my distracted and foggy consciousness noticed an odd fact—there was a number ‘1’ glowing over Fleita’s head. The girl had received her First Kill…

  “Stacey, when you mentioned Evolett recently, what were you talking about?” I asked my virtual wife telepathically, a feeling of dread surging inside of me.

  “That he’s very upset that all the experience for completing the Dungeon went to you and Clutzer. That you two are welcome in any clan for doing what a hundred other players couldn’t do…Dan, I have a question of my own—what prompted you to hand over the Paw to Evolett? And for free? My uncle is still in shock—he’s obsessed with finding some ulterior motive to your gift. He’s even contacted Corporation officials to have them make sure that the transfer of the Paw was legit. People don’t just make presents like that, especially over several percentage points of Experience…What do you really want from him, Dan?”

  The news struck me like a ton of bricks—so hard that I barely kept my balance. I immediately recalled my conversations with Stacey and Evolett—no one had mentioned the loss of the First Kill…This meant that with my own two hands I had handed the Paw over for nothing…Damn it!

  “Dan? Is something wrong?”

  “Stacey, I thought that only Clutzer and I had received the First Kill! And that Evolett was pissed at me because he’d missed out on it…I am such a moron!”

  “You gave him the Paw as compensation for the First Kill?” Even through our telepathic link I could tell that Anastaria was laughing. “My poor uncle! He’s been fretting about all the various schemes that you’re plotting to pull on him and arranging all kinds of defenses against your exorbitant demands. And it turns out that you simply misunderstood things and made a knee-jerk decision…Daniel, oh Daniel…It’s like having a child of my own with you! I’ll have a chat with him…”

  “Is everything all right with you, Mahan?” Fleita asked worriedly, as I had completely clicked out of her world.

  “Yes…Fleita. I just…Oh, never mind. Let’s go. We need to find the den of the Gray Death.”

  “Tell me, why did the wolves show up in the Beatwick film anyway?” the girl began to interrogate me as soon as we entered the forest. The paths that I had run back and forth along 3–4 months ago hadn’t changed, so I felt quite at home here. “I thought they weren’t part of the scenario…”

  “If I only knew.” I really had no good answer for the girl.

  “Mahan, when are you going to start teaching me how to be a Shaman? Kornik said that in five months I’ll have to do my initiation trial, but you’ve only taught me a thing or two and even those turned out incorrect…Am I your student or what?”

  “You’re not a student—you’re a pain in the neck! If you keep whining, I’ll send you back to Evolett and ask him to lock you in the training ground until you reach Level 200. If you hadn’t noticed, your education is going at full steam. You’ve at least learned how to use your Spirits.”

  “But Kornik taught me that, not you,” Fleita parried.

  “But I’m the one who asked him to do it. He wasn’t going to teach you himself, if you recall. Can’t you tell the difference? So stop moaning and walk on in silence. Oh, what a familiar glade! There used to be a mine here in which…”

  “A-ah-ah!” The girl’s piercing scream resounded throughout the entire forest no doubt—after which, I was left all alone. Fleita had signed out of the game.

  “Shamana Mahana, speak the password, eh?” A hushed whisper sounded from somewhere beside me. I turned and almost jumped—a disfigured goblin stood next to me. He was missing an arm, a leg, a part of his face, and he was transparent like a ghost. The creature before me was buried to his knee in the ground, giving me the impression that even his one remaining leg had been lopped off.

  “Password?” I asked befuddled, trying to still my trembling and not sure what this ghost wanted from me. And—what was more interesting—what was this goblin doing here?

  “The new bossa said that Shamana Mahana will come and speak the password. The bossa said that I have to listen to Shamana Mahana like the bossa. That Shamana Mahana will speak the password…Shamana is here—what’s the password, eh?”

  Why this is the very same goblin that Hellfire killed! But how?!

  “Blah-Boom,” I said, remembering the secret words. Once upon a time, I was fortunate enough to become the owner of a goblin work gang. They mined Tin Ore for me—which turned out to be Cursed later on—but then Hellfire and Anastaria showed up and killed them. They killed them in passing without bothering to find out by what miracle a gang of goblins were working in Malabarian mines…Of course they compensated this loss for me, but still, I was sorry to see the goblins go. Now, the glib and grinning goblin ghost began to report on the work they had done:

  “We are producing two stacks of Spectral Ore a day and storing it under a bush. But, Shamana Mahana, the stacks, they are a-vanishing! We cover it with leaves and guard it—still they disappeara! The bossa, he ordered a resta, so…”

  “Do you know him, Mahan?” I heard Fleita’s stunned exclamation. She had found the courage to re-enter the game.

  “What’s with the screaming, Fleita?” I asked the girl. “You scared one half of the forest and cracked up the other half—a player terrified of an ordinary goblin!”

  “But just look at him!” the girl flushed.

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately? Imagine—a hideous Zombie criticizing a ghost’s appearance.”

  “I’m not hideous!” Fleita protested.

  “Okay, pupil! Here’s a job for you—take your fear by the scruff and toss it out the window. Then, step up to our esteemed goblin friend and shake his paw! If you’re going to act like that anytime someone odd shows up, maybe, it’s a bit early for you to be playing in Barliona? Maybe, dolls and cross-stitching is more your line?”

  “I was behaving myself!” objected Fleita. However, she took several shuffling steps to the ghost who had frozen in place as soon as he’d been interrupted. The Zombie offered her hand to the goblin and started noticeably when the ghost took it. “Oh!”

  At first I imagined that the girl hadn’t overcome her fear and cried out again, yet what followed was difficult to explain. My student squatted down before the poor goblin, muttered something, and then took a handful of earth, kneaded it like playdough and began to attach it to his stump. At first I wanted to stop Fleita, since the earth is substantial while the ghost is not…but when I saw that the earth attached to the disfigured goblin was beginning to fade and become transparent, I stopped in my tracks. The spectacle I was witnessing with my own eyes simply didn’t square with my understanding of how ghosts worked. Fleita was using ordinary earth to heal this creature…Was this possible?

  “Thanksa,” said the goblin when Fleita finished treating him and a halo appeared around her indicating that my student had gained three levels at once. The girl completely mended the goblin—she had even fashioned eyes for the now happy face of the creature before us. “Bossa, it’d be good to fix all our workers. Even if we’re bound, it’s easier to work in one piecea.”

  “Bound?” I zeroed in on the word that would explain to me how these ghosts had managed to linger in this plane of existence.

  “The Transformer,” the goblin answered curtly, pointing with a fixed arm off to the side. I looked in the indicated direction and swore—a mere twenty meters from us, several steel antennae protruded from the ground. A Kartossian Transformer…one of the devices that spread darkness through the hallowed lands.

>   “Is that like the one that was in the temple?” Even Fleita caught on to what the goblin was talking about. “So the goblins were killed, but they couldn’t leave this world because they became cursed?”

  “Plus one Intellect to Fleita,” I quipped sarcastically and grinned—the girl’s attitude was beginning to rub off on me. I was picking up her sarcasm. “Tell me, though, what just happened? Why’d you heal this goblin like some Mother Teresa and, more importantly, how did you manage to do it?”

  “I…As soon as I touched him—at your orders, I’ll remind you, so give me a break—as soon as I touched him, I received a notification about a unique quest. Zombies have restorative powers, though only for themselves. The quest allowed me the opportunity to restore the ghost…So I combined my powers of restoration with a Spirit of Healing and cast it into the ghost. It didn’t work…So then I…Well what else could I do? Turn to you and say, ‘Oh, great teacher, please help me…’? So I did whatever came to mind…I fashioned him an arm, imbued it with a Healing Spirit and activated my restoration…And don’t even ask me how come it worked…I have no idea. Are you about to scold me again for being a hideous Zombie instead of a Shaman?”

  “No,” I smiled at the girl’s vicious reaction. “You asked me when I’d start teaching you how to be a Shaman…So here you go…I don’t even have to teach you anything—you’re headed in the right direction. What you did just now—this is the Way of the Shaman. Your personal Way of the Zombie-Shaman…”

  “Does that mean that I’m a Shaman?” the girl’s eyebrows jumped, transforming her already blank eyes into saucers. Two terrible, pupil-less saucers. She really was hideous!

  “What are you doing with the ore?” I returned to the goblin, leaving Fleita without an answer to her question.

  “Putting it in our pocketsa. We can’t drop it to the grounda—it disappears right away. Our pockets are little, they fit only five stacks…Afterwards, we place them under the bush, but they always vanish in the end…”

  “Carrying the ore in your pockets is no good,” I shook my head. “Let me have it.”

  Spectral Ore…Looking at the five clods of swirling fog, I had no idea how to use it. You can’t cast ingots out of it, which means that you can’t forge swords out of it…What is it for anyway?

  “Let’s go to the mine. Fleita will fix up the rest of you and then we’ll decide what to do with you,” I said, placing the ore in my bag.

  Upon seeing the six other disfigured goblins, Fleita did not leave the game. After spending several dozen minutes on each one, she stepped aside satisfied and asked:

  “Tell me, Mahan, does it make any sense to adopt Architecture as my main profession?”

  “Well…You’ll have to decide everything related to choosing your profession on your own. Did you like molding the earth? If doing it didn’t bring you any pleasure, then there’s no point in choosing Architecture. And if you did like it, then why not? Architects are in high demand in Barliona. For instance, I definitely need people to work on my castle. You can work for me…”

  “To hell with him,” said the girl and her character vanished for a moment. It seemed that she’d lost her temper again.

  “Why’d you say ‘to hell with him?’” I asked the girl when she returned.

  “Because I wanted to become like you. I wanted to be a Jeweler…”

  “Each player has his own Way,” I smiled. “If you want to be an Architect, then be an Architect…What’s being a Jeweler have to do with it?”

  “Bossa, here’s some more ore.” The fully restored goblins dumped another thirty or so stacks of Spectral Ore at my feet with the satisfied air of sentients who had completed their tasks.

  “What am I going to do with you boys?” I thought aloud, staring at the ghostly gang.

  “Maybe you can release them?” Fleita suggested, but I shook my head:

  “It won’t work. They’re not listed in my work gangs…They effectively don’t exist for me, but at the same time, somehow they’re still here…And, to be honest, I really don’t understand why the developers kept them around. Maybe as a source of Spectral Ore?”

  “Have you seen the Gray Death?” Fleita asked the goblins, while I was contemplating being and nothingness.

  “The enormous Level 150 she-wolf with broken ribs, a half-split head and a missing eye? There’s a pack of twenty similar-looking wolves with her?” ascertained one of the goblins, speaking clearly and properly. Listening to the ghost, I was becoming more and more upset—according to the quest description, you could assume that the Gray Death was attacking all the residents of Kartoss and all I had to do was lead her to some other location. After all, the quest made no mention of killing her. And yet if the Transformers had changed the essence of the Gray Death so much, then she was already beyond any help….Damn! She had been such a cool wolf!

  “The same,” Fleita confirmed.

  “They come running past our mine every seven days,” the ghost replied. “The last time was five days ago, so she should show up in two days. They tried to attack us several times, but we belong to different planes of existence, so the wolves couldn’t do anything to us…”

  “Clutzer, hello! Assemble your party and teleport to these coordinates,” I indicated our location. “We are in Kartoss, so make sure to travel through Altameda. We need you as soon as possible…”

  “Be there in 10 minutes,” the Rogue wrote back.

  “Mahan, we have to do something!” said Fleita, who couldn’t see my exchange with my Raid Leader.

  “Dan, what are you up to?” Anastaria didn’t waste time checking in on me.

  “I’m going to try to destroy a Kartossian Transformer…”

  “They’re unbreakable—they’re the source of the darkness spreading across Kartoss. Clutzer won’t be able to do anything to it. Hmm…Didn’t we decide to put off the wolf quest for later…?”

  “Plans changed…If we don’t manage to break it, we’ll at least scratch it up real good. Stacey—you are the coolest girl in the world!”

  “I know!” came the response, and our telepathic link went silent.

  “We’ll do something, don’t worry,” I replied to Fleita and briefly described what I had just done. “The Transformer is keeping the goblins here, so we’ll take it offline. Guys!” I turned to the gang of workers waiting for us. “Tell me, what do you have against the landlady? Why steal her ore?”

  The speed with which the ghosts tore back to the mine would even make Plinto’s phoenix jealous.

  “The landlady?” Fleita asked, surprised.

  “It’s a long story,” I waved her off, not wishing to delve into the topic. I couldn’t well tell the girl about how I tried to seduce the miners in the form of an orcish maiden. I’d never hear the end of her laughter…

  “We got zilch,” Clutzer shook his head sadly, after several hours of struggling with the Transformer. “It doesn’t even have a Durability bar. It’s as if the thing is indestructible…Mahan, either I’m an utter newb or this hunk of junk can’t be destroyed.”

  “Got it…Okay, a pack of cursed wolves is due to come running through here in two days. It needs to be destroyed. But it’s vital that I’m present when that happens…Tell Leite to summon you back to Altameda—there’s no point in paying for your own portals…”

  Anastaria was right after all—the Transformer could not be destroyed. Clutzer and his raid party tried so hard that not a single tree remained standing within twenty meters of the Transformer, while the ground around was scorched and dead. Yet the Transformer remained, whole and undamaged.

  “What are we going to do now?” Fleita asked almost melancholically. “We can’t just leave them here—they’re suffering…”

  “Fleita, they’re only software…”

  “I get that obviously! But even if they’re software, then the software’s suffering! You have to think of something, Mahan!”

  An idea was beginning to form in my head, but I couldn’t quite grab a h
old of it. The goblins were still alive because they were cursed at the moment of the explosion…They had gone on working because of my earlier order…By the way, I forgot—the goblins were cursed because of the Transformer that couldn’t be destroyed…

  But we could fence it in and block its effects! The idea finally reached me, evoking the image of the Imperial Throne with Geranika’s Dagger stuck in it and the Stones of Light situated around it. We needed to create a barrier around the Transformer!

  Digging around my bag, I found a piece of Blessed Ore. I did the right thing by stopping by Elizabeth’s and buying the ore from her—now I know what I have to do. I’ll need to craft a Blessed Rose of Eluna and put it on the ghosts. Then, according to precedent, they should stop experiencing the effects of the Transformer.

  “What do you have in mind, Mahan?” asked Fleita with surprise when I produced my Smithing Tools and began to smelt the ingots. I didn’t feel like answering the girl—first I had to prepare the ingredients, do the business at hand, and then I could explain my plan…

  Creating the ingot and fashioning it into a Rose only took me ten minutes. I called over the nearest goblin and with a satisfied expression clasped the amulet around his neck. What a resourceful and intelligent player I am—whatever the developers come up with, I’m right there to thwart their plans…

  “Stop bossa! Take it off, bossa! It hurts! Ow ow owa!” Not a second passed before the ghost began to holler in an inhuman voice, collapsed to the ground and began to roll around it, periodically passing through the tree trunks and flat-out refusing to leave this world.

  “What are you doing, Mahan?” yelled Fleita, when I dashed towards the goblin to rip the amulet from his neck. It took me several attempts, since the goblin wouldn’t hold still but kept rolling on the ground, screaming his head off across the entire forest. The other goblins were looking at this spectacle with terror, rubbing their necks. When at last I managed to tear off the amulet, I could clearly see a burn that the chain had left. The ghost’s chest was an even more terrible sight. My amulet had scarred this otherworldly being.