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

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “I’ll be a fighter,” I informed Kalatea. A small sword icon appeared in my frame and I was assigned to a group with Fleita, Kalatea and Clutzer. The group of the oddballs.

  I spent a long time considering whether I should take Clutzer with me or not. I even consulted with Mr. Kristowski about this issue—what would be better for the clan? In the end the only reason that caused me to call the Rogue and tell him about the new Dungeon was the First Kill and its attendant reward. No one knows what a new Dungeon will offer. What if the reward is a +10% to loot dropped during a raid? It’d be silly to forgo a profit because of my personal feelings. My new manager reminded me that a clan head couldn’t afford such luxuries.

  “You guys really did a fine job clearing this place,” I couldn’t help but remark once we’d passed through several enormous caves without encountering a single monster. “The mobs haven’s shown up yet.”

  “They didn’t renew the Dungeon, so they haven’t respawned,” Clutzer explained. “If there’s no rush, I recommend making several raids to get to the first boss, clearing the Dungeon as we go. This is the first attempt, after all, so the loot dropped by the mobs could be a lot tastier than even what the bosses drop.”

  “Kalatea, what’d you pick up during your first sally?” I asked belatedly. Under our agreement, everything but gold belonged to my clan, and I should gently remind the Shaman of this. What if she forgets?

  “I don’t remember. I handed everything over to the goblin in the castle,” Kalatea replied. “If you like, I can send you a complete list from my logs. No? Then let’s move out.”

  Of the thirty-five players in the Dungeon, thirty-two belonged to the extremely unpopular (on our continent) Shaman class. Tambourines, dances and songs—who wants to look that dumb in front of their friends? And yet, the more I watched Kalatea’s raid in action, the better I understood just how stupid the players on our continent were.

  The total Hit Points of most mobs in the Dungeons scales to the number of players in the raid. For a raid of ten, this level of Hit Points is many times smaller than for a raid of twenty. And the relationship between the raid size and the HP of mobs/bosses isn’t linear, but exponential. This means you can’t simply storm a Dungeon with numbers.

  Unless of course you’re a Shaman Elementalist.

  Thus our thirty Astrumian Shamans were joined by thirty enormous, two-meter-tall elementals. Ten water healers, fifteen fire and wind fighters, and another five earthen tanks—and yet despite these immense forces, the Barliona system kept the total HPs of the mobs unaltered. As a result, we strolled along the corridor as if were a wide and vacant sidewalk, paved with the loot of fallen mobs. Now that they had received the ability to kill Shadow creatures, the elementals swarmed the hapless Level 180 mobs en masse, giving them no chance for resistance. All that the players had to do was observe the gradually growing XP bar and direct their minions at the next group of Shadow-tainted beasts.

  “Boss fight,” Kalatea said quietly when the raid stepped out into a huge cave. In the center of the forty-meter wide hall, flooded with green light, slumbered a two-meter tall ball of fur, seeping gray fog—a Shadow-tainted Bear.

  Gar’lan Lok. Abilities: Sweeping Blow, Fearsome Roar, Deadly Bite. Level: 240.

  “Bjorg, you know what to do,” Kalatea organized the players. “First group take up position next to that wall…”

  The preparations for battle looked so smooth and polished that the last thing I expected was the sudden feeling of foreboding. It was so unjustified—the boss was only a Level 240 with all his skills visible and familiar to us. There was nothing complicated about him and yet my premonition kept screaming that we needed some backup plan. Giving in to the urge and trying not to draw our leader’s attention, I asked Plinto:

  “Got any scrolls of revival?”

  “Sure…” replied the Vampire, narrowing his eyes with suspicion. “What do you need them for?”

  “Not me—you. Something tells me that they’ll come in handy…”

  “What’s the problem, Plinto?” Kalatea asked, when a dialog appeared asking us to confirm our readiness for battle.

  “Someone here isn’t feeling so well,” smirked Plinto, indicating me with a look, “but he refuses to tell us what’s wrong.”

  “Mahan?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I laughed. “I simply have a strange feeling. It’s like…I can’t explain it but I get the impression that we can’t beat this boss right now. That’s why I asked Plinto if he had scrolls of revival.”

  “I’m with Mahan,” Fleita spoke up in my defense. “This boss isn’t as simple as he seems at first glance. Something’s off about him, but I can’t say what.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Kalatea hummed pensively. “Let’s see what this teddy is capable of. To battle!”

  …

  Player Aozaki wishes to revive you…

  “Let’s try a different way! Antsinthepantsa, summon your earth elemental. We’ll distribute the blow. Bjorg, dodge the attack—he’s knocking you down too easily. Let’s go!”

  …

  Player Aozaki wishes to revive you…

  “Clutzer, can you tank the damage? We’ll add five more elementals.”

  “The boss doesn’t even notice them,” muttered Bjorg. “He doesn’t spread damage to them, while his own attack is stronger depending on the targets in front of him.”

  “Kite him into the raid—we’ll try to take the blows ourselves. Plinto, flank him in the meantime.”

  Player Aozaki wishes to revive you…

  “Change tactics! Bjorg, you’ll be…”

  Player Aozaki wishes to revive you…

  Player Aozaki wishes to revive you…

  Player Aozaki wishes to revive you…

  “I’m beginning to suspect that we should stop and think a little,” Plinto remarked after our thirtieth revival. “I’m out of scrolls.”

  “What the hell kind of Dungeon is this?” Kalatea opened the staff meeting we’d hastily assembled in one of the earthen corridors. “A Level 240 boss wipes the floor with a Level 288 tank like he’s a child! Even with the ‘Teeth’ aura cast on him!”

  “Channeling the damage doesn’t work. Distributing the damage to the raid doesn’t work,” Clutzer began to list off the tactics we’d tried. “Evading the damage doesn’t work either. The only thing that’s left is to somehow interrupt the attack and prevent the bear from using Deadly Bite. Or, as another option to this, we can take several Priests, another tank and have the Priests revive the tank while the other tank works on the boss.”

  “You’re forgetting that this boss doesn’t have an aggro list,” Bjorg remarked grimly. “He aggros whoever he sees first, aiming his Sweeping Blow at the largest concentration of people. The second tank won’t be able to aggro him. And he doesn’t react to the elementals. It’s like he doesn’t even notice them.”

  “But this is just the first boss!” I stated the obvious. “According to convention, he should be the easiest.”

  “He’s the first and only boss in this Dungeon,” Plinto brought me back down to earth. “There’s no way forward—I surveyed the entire cave.”

  “The Deadly Bite comes every thirty seconds,” Clutzer muttered pensively, thinking out loud. “Bjorg can survive one bite if all his defensive abilities are active. He can survive a second one if we cast ‘Teeth’ on him and several shields…But a third—forget it. And the fourth likewise. By the fifth, Bjorg’s cooldown has expired and the cycle starts over. So we need to figure out a way to survive two blows. I suggest we use a bubble. We need a Paladin for testing and…and that’s it. There aren’t any other options.”

  “A bubble won’t help,” Bjorg interjected. “The boss will just switch to the rest of the raid. Several Sweeping Blows and Fearsome Roars and everyone will be down for the count. Again—he has no aggro list.”

  “The Spirits of Protection and Spirits of Shielding don’t help—they don’t stack,” Kalatea added. “W
e need to keep thinking. As for the bubble—why don’t we test it? Do you have a Paladin in your clan?”

  “I can recommend a good Paladin Healer,” Clutzer replied when I didn’t respond. “A veteran raider. Mahan?”

  “From your warriors?” I asked just in case. What if he was about to suggest we use Anastaria…?

  “Yeah. My deputy. Reliable dude, even if he is a Paladin…”

  “All right, invite him tomorrow morning.”

  “Are we done for today then?” Kalatea asked, surprised.

  “We need to buy more scrolls of revival and find a way to survive two attacks. If the boss draws up the aggro list at the very beginning of battle, then a bubble will send Bjorg to the very bottom of the list. What good is he to us down there?”

  “Well…” hummed Aozaki and then laughed: “With Shamans alone we won’t complete this raid—but with Paladins it’d be a cinch. We take a hundred Paladins, the tank gets bubbled, everyone else bubbles themselves—except for one who bubbles whoever is being aggroed. The aggro list changes, the boss devours his prey and then turns on the tank, since he’s now at the top of the aggro list. Rinse and repeat until the bear’s down.”

  “Won’t work,” Clutzer shook his head. “Bubble’s cooldown is two minutes. The boss attacks every thirty seconds, and his Hit Points depend on the number of players at the beginning of battle. You’ll need to sacrifice half of the remaining raid three times in two minutes. After three cycles of this, there won’t be anyone to fight the boss.”

  “Guys!” I said, drawing everyone’s attention. “Let’s reconvene here tomorrow morning at ten. I’ll be waiting for suggestions about how Bjorg can survive two deadly blows. Thank you all, we’re done for today…”

  The third day of the raid ended like the previous two had—with our complete defeat. There just didn’t seem to be a tactic for the bear—three different attacks which the tank had to survive. Two of the attacks did area damage, so the tank had to keep the bear’s jaws away from the rest of the raid. The other attack only had a single target but one that wiped out our Level 288 Warrior. Neither slipping into the Astral Plane, nor summoning unique Spirits capable of channeling the damage to the elementals, nor any other abilities did any good—Bjorg simply didn’t have the Hit Points. There was nothing we could do, no matter what we tried.

  “Master, there is a guest here,” Viltrius announced to my astonishment, interrupting yet another sally to the tank forums. Time kept ticking mercilessly and yet we were in the same place unable to come up with anything. Even the thought of asking Donotpunnik or Anastaria for help had already occurred to me, but I put it aside for now. It wasn’t the time yet. By the way, Anastaria still hadn’t re-entered the game in the last three days, as if something really had happened to her. “He wishes to see you. Shall I usher him in?”

  “Y-yes,” I stuttered, clearing the Dungeon and Anastaria out of my mind. Someone had found Altameda! We needed to teleport to a different location urgently!

  “Your guest, Master,” Viltrius said a few moments later and my visitor entered my hall as if he owned it. With each step he took, my jaw dropped lower and lower—until the tall (in Barliona terms) dwarf stopped several steps from me. An elephant could easily enter my mouth at this point.

  “Let’s not beat around the bush,” he began. “We don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll say the magic word right off the bat: ‘Crastil.’ Will that do?”

  “M-more than,” I replied.

  “In that case, tell me, Mahan, what the hell are you up to?” asked Hellfire, sitting down on my throne. “You were given clear directions about what to do. The plan was explained to you, yet here you are improvising like an idiot! Have you grown weary of this life or something?”

  “What improvisation?” I met the question with one of my own, gradually regaining my composure and ignoring the question about life. Hellfire was the last player I would’ve guessed to be working with the old man, so I needed to check everything thoroughly. The fact that he had shown up in my castle and spoken the password didn’t mean much. Who knows what Crastil he was talking about?

  “You were offered protection,” Hellfire explained, “but you ran off in some unknown direction. It’s not clear why you’re wasting time. You don’t have the Tears and you still haven’t gained access to the Tomb. Have you done anything at all?”

  “I got the dagger’s hilt…” I began to explain, but the dwarf interrupted again.

  “Just the hilt! In three weeks of work! Mahan, I really can’t call this anything but sabotage! Are you even with us, or are you still Anastaria’s lapdog?”

  “Hell, don’t you think you’re going a bit far?” I decided to go on the offensive. I won’t let anyone push me around in my castle. Especially Hellfire! “I’m doing everything we agreed on. I have the hilt, even though I didn’t even have access to that Dungeon. As for getting the blade—that’s in the works, even though I don’t have the resources for it. Have you noticed that no one presented me with high-level players that could help me kill the boss? We’ve been battering our heads against the wall for three days and here you show up like a hero on a white horse and start accusing me of improvising like an idiot! Even though I don’t owe you or the old man a thing, all our agreements are still in place!”

  “What old man?” Hellfire furrowed his brow. “What are you babbling about, Mahan?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I waved dismissively, almost dropping my jaw onto the floor again. Here’s another reversal! Judging by Hellfire’s natural reaction, he really didn’t know about the old man. That, or the Warrior was an excellent actor, which I doubt, or…or the old man doesn’t manage this part of the conspiracy. Which is actually quite natural and reasonable—why send a real person to meet with me? They could’ve just hired some actor or had the deputy assistant of the third chauffeur talk to me. The important thing was to draw me into the plot and figure out who does what later on. So the fairy tale that the old man had told me about the conflict between Phoenix and the secret faction was just lies. The logical question is who is actually behind Hellfire and what their goals are. I don’t believe that one of the best players of our continent suddenly decided to turn on the very clan that provides him with enormous funds and opportunities. That kind of thing doesn’t happen. However, instead of coming to me and claiming that he’d been offered money to help me, Hellfire had made it clear that he is one of active members of the conspiracy. Why? It’s completely unclear. Although…What if the old man does exist and he really does have a reason to settle scores with Phoenix? And Hellfire has just been given the information he needs to achieve the old man’s goals. In Barliona, the old man doesn’t even have to be an old man. I need to check this and pump Hellfire for more information! A crazy idea immediately occurred to me, so I took several deep breaths, calming my nerves and showing my guest that I was choosing my words carefully, after which I went on cautiously:

  “Hell, let’s try it one more time from the very beginning. We can argue back and forth for a long time, but time’s exactly what we don’t have. You were right about that. Imagine that you just entered the hall. Hello Hellfire!”

  “Hello,” the dwarf grunted, unwilling to argue with my whimsical turn. I was a Shaman after all, what else could he expect. “Crastil.”

  “Phoenix must fall!” I announced triumphantly and looked at the dwarf inquisitively.

  “What?” he asked after a pause, once he’d figured out that I was expecting him to say something.

  “I spoke the security passphrase. You need to reply with the correct response,” I said, looking at Hellfire so sincerely that the Warrior became flustered.

  “Mahan, has your Shamanism made you lose your damn mind? What passphrase, goddamn it?! We got together last night and realized that you won’t be able to complete the Dungeon, so we decided to help you. I was ordered to appear at these coordinates, say ‘Crastil’ and become your mercenary! There wasn’t any talk about any passphrases!”

&n
bsp; Serenity now! Serenity now! So in addition to Hellfire there are some other ‘we’ involved in all this? The idea of using the Warrior as a tank was a good one, but I really wanted to know who I was dealing with.

  “That’s odd,” I muttered. “As it happens, I was ordered not to interact with anyone without a passphrase, and to suspect anyone with any connections to Phoenix. Sorry, but I have to suspect you too—you are Phoenix, after all. What’re we going to do?”

  “You said yourself that saying the word ‘Crastil’ is enough for you!”

  “I did,” I agreed, “but I was in shock. Of all the options in this place, you’re the last person I expected to see. Then I calmed down a bit and remembered the thing about the passphrase. If I understand correctly, you don’t know it. What are we going to do?”

  “Hang on. I’ll go figure it out,” growled Hellfire and dissolved in thin air. I collapsed in my rocking throne and tried to still my shaking. This isn’t possible! Phoenix’s best player is playing against his own clan!

  “No one has any idea about any passphrase.” Hardly had I managed to calm my thoughts—which were racing around my brainpan like some crazed team of horseswithout bothering to stray into the areas responsible for logical reasoning—when Hellfire returned. “Who told you about passwords and responses?”

  “The person who hired me to do this thing,” I went on plying my line. “The same one who told me that I couldn’t trust anyone. What are we going to do?”

  “I have no idea. I was told very plainly—go to your castle, say ‘Crastil,’ give you this Crastil and help you with the Dungeon. Passwords and passphrases are just something from some cheap spy drama.”

  “You have a Crastil?!” I couldn’t help but exclaim ecstatically.