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

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “There’s all kinds of stuff in Phoenix’s castles,” smirked the Warrior and offered me the Crastil of Shalaar, the very one that Anastaria had stolen from me. “Is this good enough as a passphrase for you?”

  “I guess so,” I replied, tossing the Crastil into my bag. Now I’d need to figure what to do about Reptilis. “We’re making another attempt on the boss tomorrow at ten. Do you know why I need the hilt and blade?”

  “Do you really fail to understand that Barliona is not the place to discuss this? If you hadn’t run off god knows where, you’d already know the updated info. For now just follow the original plan. When the time comes, you’ll be told what’s changed. Now, let’s deal with the important point: We need to hammer out the excuse for why I’ve joined your raid. Here’s what I suggest…”

  Having sent Hellfire back to the capital, I sat down in my favorite rocking throne and surrendered to complete despair. What did we have: Some weird Big Brother is watching all of my movements in Barliona, thereby breaking every last law of this world. In effect, I could even now call upon the Heralds and betray Hellfire—that is, by claiming that he received the coordinates of my castle and Dungeon from some employee of the Corporation. I had no doubts at all that someone from that organization was involved in all this. They were the only ones who could spy on players in-game. And I don’t mean some low-level programmers or designers. Only security agents and members of upper management had access to these kinds of powers. That was a simple fact. Was Hellfire dumb for showing up in my castle without an invitation? No, our conversation suggests that the Warrior was a very good and thoughtful player. Did he consider that I might betray him to the Heralds? Perhaps. Was it a risk? It was. Would the people who have been planning an operation against Phoenix for several years now, slip up on such a bit of stupidity? Never. It follows that the Imitators playing the roles of Heralds are accessible to ‘our’ man in the Corporation. But this only further reinforces the idea that laws are being broken pell-mell. Why do this? Just to exact a revenge against Phoenix? Insanity. Why would Hellfire want to exact revenge against his clan? Stop! Why would people who could adjust game data, even if insignificant game data, need a simple Shaman? I mean, they go to such trouble to keep any unnecessary information away from me, so that I, god forbid…Oh goddamn it all!

  What a moron I am! If I destroy the three leading players of Phoenix, they’ll sic their meanest dogs on me! I’ll become Phoenix’s main target in the game as well as reality—the honor of the clan will be at stake! Its financial wellbeing! And if I don’t know anything, I won’t be able to betray the old man or Sergei! Only my fellow patsy—Hellfire. And yet if he too gets the Tear, I’ll be hard-pressed to prove that he’s in a conspiracy against Phoenix. Even swearing an oath with the Emperor as my witness won’t do, since Hellfire never made any agreements in Barliona. So it follows that everything that’ll happen will be entirely my doing and if there’s any investigation the guilty one will be Mahan, Mahan and only Mahan—not the old man or Hellfire or the suspicious Sergei. They want to set me up all over again, only now it’s not Phoenix but their enemies—and here I am helping them do it! What a lovely life this is…

  “There’s a new addition to our team,” I announced the next morning and introduced Hellfire. “I hope that the boss will be dealt with in short order.”

  “Why look at what the lizard dragged in!” Plinto muttered sarcastically. “Mahan, you didn’t empty the clan coffers to hire this guy, did you?”

  “Meaning?” I furrowed my brow.

  “Everyone knows that Hellfire won’t even go to the bathroom without someone paying him.”

  “The First Kill,” I replied curtly. “And a share of the loot.”

  “Hmm…” Plinto grew pensive for a moment, then smiled widely. “That’s an option. In the end, what’s the difference why Hellfire has decided to bless us with his presence? Clutzer, do apprise ‘Mr. Number Two Yet Again in Malabar’ about our tactics.”

  “Has your recent bit of luck gone to your head so much that you’ve forgotten your true place?” Hellfire seethed, looking down on Plinto. Given the dwarf’s short stature, this was no small feat, yet Hellfire had clearly put in the effort to learn this skill well. I bet Anastaria had been his tutor.

  “Oh noes!” Plinto threw up his arms in mock terror as if trying to shield himself from Hellfire. “Who will come to my aid and succor?! His dwarven majesty has deigned to anger.”

  “Cut it out, both of you.” I stepped between Plinto and Hellfire. “You’re acting like a husband and wife, ten years into their marriage. You’ll have plenty of time to gnaw on each other after we’ve completed the Dungeon. In the meantime, shut up the both of you—or neither one’s going with us. I’ll go pick up a tank in Astrum, if I have to. Along with a dps,” I added, sensing that I’d left Plinto an opening. “Let’s move out. The bear’s already waiting for us.”

  With Hellfire along, the boss battle turned into a cakewalk. Due to the level difference, the damage that the Deadly Bite did to our new tank was much lower, and when you factored in the heavy armor, higher Hit Points and Hellfire’s precision (he kept the bear from doing any damage to our raid in his berserk state) the boss turned into an ordinary training dummy—to be worked over by a series of spells.

  “Are you guys going to continue on your own?” Hellfire asked quietly once the bear collapsed to the ground slain. I was about to ask what there was to continue if this had been the final boss, but realized in time that something was missing. I had received a notification about the loot we’d acquired, as well as the XP which was worth half a level, and yet there was no mention of the First Kill.

  “On our own we’ll be stuck here a week,” I said, stumped, and turned to Plinto: “Didn’t you say that there’s only one boss here?”

  “I was wrong. Happens to everyone,” the Rogue replied nonplussed, shrugging and pointing at the wall with a new passage. “These two holes weren’t here earlier.”

  I didn’t bother asking the Rogue which second hole he was talking about. And to judge by the smirk on Hellfire’s face, the dwarf, who was standing next to the new passage, also understood which second hole the Rogue was referring to. Plinto was in his element.

  “Hmm…” Hellfire said meaningfully when the Shamans began to clear the way to the next boss. “Never really considered how effective elementals could be. We don’t have many Shamans, but if we use Demonologists, whom we have aplenty…Not a bad idea. We should test it out.”

  It took us several hours to reach the next boss. The new passage led us to a small cave full of mobs, where we ended up finding a single way forward—deep into the earth along a narrow spiraling corridor, which in many ways negated our elementals. The Shamans couldn’t see far enough ahead to know where to send them, so we were forced to lead with our tanks. Like in the good old days.

  “Who has the key?” Bjorg asked mockingly when our further progress into the depths of Barliona was interrupted by an iron grate. Hellfire smacked the iron with his axe, hoping to see an Endurance bar appear, but nothing happened. The iron was part of the door’s ornament and couldn’t be destroyed.

  “We need a worm,” remarked Clutzer, squeezing through to the front, after which he related our adventure in the Dolma Dungeon.

  “Back the way we came, everyone!” Kalatea ordered. “We need to find a…”

  “No…” I whispered, stopping beside the grate and placing my face against its cold iron. “We don’t need to find anything…”

  I had spent the last month without my premonition telling me that something was very wrong. My mind told me to return and find another way, but my premonition said one thing—we needed to move forward. It didn’t matter how or with whom—all that mattered was to keep moving.

  “Mahan?” Kalatea frowned. “You know something?”

  “No,” I shook my head and looked up at the Shaman. “But I feel it. Tell me, what’s so good about Shamans?”

  “Everything,” Kalatea r
eplied, puzzled.

  “Wrong. All classes are good. But what makes the Shamans stand out?”

  “Heh!” gurgled Plinto. “Something tells me I know what you mean. I’m with you.”

  “If I’m allowed to bring companions with me…”

  “What do you and what’s allowed to you have to do with this? I’ll be perfectly fine without you.” Plinto’s eyes turned into two red embers, fog shrouded his body and the space around him shivered with fear and the desire to flee. The High Vampire transformed into his combat form.

  “NO GRATE IN BARLIONA SHALL BAR THE WAY TO THE SON OF THE PATRIARCH!” echoed up and down the corridor as Plinto dissolved into the air around him and materialized on the other side of the grate. I could swear that several Shamans collapsed to the ground from the debuffs that afflicted everyone around the terrifying transformation, but I didn’t pay much attention to this. Not right now. “ARE YOU WITH ME, DRAGON?”

  “Shamans can teleport a short distance,” I explained to Kalatea, walking up to the grate and waving away the Blink input box that appeared. I shut my eyes and imagined that I was beside Plinto. Who cares if this shouldn’t work—this is Barliona. Everything’s possible. All you have to do is want it enough. For several moments, the world around me spun and when I opened my eyes I saw Plinto standing beside me in his human form.

  “I can’t do it. What coordinates did you use?” Kalatea asked anxiously. “You can’t blink inside a Dungeon!”

  “You don’t need coordinates. You can simply teleport to the spot you need. On your own. Without coordinates.”

  “Mahan, this is a game! This isn’t goddamn reality. Everything follows the game logic here!”

  “Kalatea, you’re the chief architect of our class! There’s no one who knows our powers and capabilities better than you. If I can do it, so can you. Try it!”

  “It’s not working!” Kalatea replied angrily a few moments later. “Why don’t you come back and take me with you?”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Plinto spoke up suddenly. “I’ll wager a tooth that if you jump back to the other side, you won’t be able to return. This is a classic obstacle—a grate in a Dungeon. Either you have to do something to open it or find another way around. The admins keep track of every First Kill, and they’ll be happy to close this exploit for Harbingers if you teleport back. Kalatea can’t hop over here not because she’s incapable but because they’ve already fixed the loophole. I’m almost sure of it. My trick with the fog won’t work a second time. Either we go on ahead together, or we return to the group and look for another way.”

  “You’re quite the expert on Dungeon mechanics, aren’t you?” I quipped.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Plinto smirked. “So what’ll it be? Rejoin the Shamans, or forge ahead together—your spirits with my daggers?”

  “And my axe!” Hellfire boomed from across the grate. “Plinto set up a training dummy.”

  “Do you want me to sweep the path before you too?”

  “It’d be nice, but my beard will do it anyway. Place the dummy.”

  Shrugging, the Rogue placed a training dummy several feet away from us. It was the ordinary kind of dummy that players used to practice on. Hellfire backed away from the grate and took a running start. For a moment he became a blur and the dummy beside me shattered into tiny fragments. The warrior had slammed into him at full steam.

  “You’re a General?” Bjorg asked almost reverently, gazing at Hellfire through the grate. “Bloody hell! You’re the first Warrior General I’ve come across.”

  “What was that all about?” Plinto asked, wiping the fragments from his armor. “You just ruined my training dummy.”

  “You can always buy another one. When I earned my General’s rank, I gained the ability to attack any target, bypassing all obstacles between us. Moats, walls, other players…grates. Kalatea, your party will have to return to the large hall. You should be able to find the main passage back there, concealed in a wall. Find it and come down to meet us. Let’s go Mahan. It’s time.”

  The portal scrolls didn’t work—the system absolutely refused to let us use it to shuttle the players over. We wasted several more minutes trying to bring anyone at all over to us with no success. After speaking with Kalatea and deciding that there was nothing left to do about the current situation, the three of us descended deeper into the winding corridor.

  “And this is why that grate was there to begin with,” Plinto said enigmatically several minutes later, pointing around a bend. “This passage leads to the exit!”

  Not understanding a thing, I approached the Rogue, saw the item he was pointing to—and at this point my inner menagerie seized control of my body. The Hamster took over the left part of my body, the Toad the right. My new animal masters hadn’t yet figured out how to coordinate among themselves, so I continued to move forward stiff-legged, limping for some reason at each step and holding my arms outstretched before me. Plinto giggled, but I couldn’t care less about his opinion—up ahead lay the main object of this Dungeon.

  The corridor terminated in a massive oaken door, reinforced with thick steel bands. A single glance at the door was enough to tell that it couldn’t be destroyed by some spell or attack. But what really drew my attention was the large golden chest that stood between me and the door—its lid locked with a massive steel padlock.

  “Geranika’s been here already,” Plinto remarked, sitting down in front of the chest and pointing at the dagger blade sticking out of the lock and seeping a dark fog. “This what you need, Mahan?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Here you go then.” With one sharp motion, Plinto yanked the blade from the lock. I managed to toss it into my bag before the Dungeon shuddered noticeably.

  “Oops,” Plinto giggled a little nervously. He glanced at me and at Hellfire and added, “I need about five minutes to pick this lock. You’re a tank and you’re a healer. Don’t stray too far.”

  “What are you talking about?” I began to ask, but the answer showed up on its own. The massive, imposing door splintered to pieces, dealing several points of damage, and the final boss of the Dungeon entered to pay us a visit. A dark-gray Hellfire decked in armor.

  “A mimic with a hidden ability!” yelled the real Hellfire, immediately putting up his shield. His doppelganger mimed his action, sinking into deep defense—as new shades grew from his back transforming into two more Shadow Hellfires. “A complete raid mimic!”

  The tank’s Hit Points began to crawl to zero, so not losing too much time in thought, I drew my staff of Almis from my bag and began to chant:

  The Shaman has three hands…

  Technically, a Harbinger needs neither a staff nor a song. A Shaman of my rank is capable of working with a Supreme Spirit intermediary directly, summoning Spirits tailored to the situation at hand. However, I’d grown accustomed to singing my song, since it helped me concentrate. I had spent a month as a powerless Shaman—a Shaman-impotent—and now, as Hellfire battled three ‘mimics’ of himself, experimenting with this new way of summoning Spirits seemed too much of a luxury. It was true that I had already obtained the blade of Geranika’s dagger, but I still needed the unifier that would allow me to open a portal to Armard. And as I understood it, the unifier was in the chest that Plinto was trying to open. And so:

  … and behind his back a wing…

  Hellfire’s HP pool was truly terrifying—over a million and a half. In comparison to him, my 75,000 made me look like a small child. Even though on paper my Spirit of Great Healing had a power of 56,000 points of healing, when I cast it on the Warrior, he regained only 22,000 HP. The rest was lost to our difference in levels, which didn’t factor in whether I was fighting an enemy or healing a player in the same group as me.

  … from the heat upon his breath…

  As soon as I entered the battle, one of the Hellfires turned into a shadow and several moments later turned into a dark gray version of me. On the one hand this made the real Hellfire’s job a
bit easier, since now he had to deal with two parts of the boss instead of three, but on the other hand, the Shadow Shaman began to heal the Shadow Hellfires. Thus everything that the tank had achieved up to that point was wiped away.

  Shining candle-fire springs…

  “I need about twenty to thirty minutes,” Plinto announced the happy news after a couple minutes. My Mana pool had fallen below 70% by this point and I couldn’t be sure that it’d hold out for the remaining time. Ordinary Spirits of Healing did nothing to Hellfire, while the Great ones were too expensive. Like any amateur healer I didn’t have any Mana potions with me, so I’d have to depend on Hellfire’s Endurance and my own Energy. Or that the boss’s secret abilities wouldn’t activate in time.

  B E W A R E !

  Speak of the devil…

  One of the Shadow Hellfires began to turn a bright red, like a mosquito swelling with oxygen-rich blood. Sucking in air, he began to balloon and expand. His armor began to creak, the rivets holding its plates began to pop out, the chain mail tore in half, while the eyes of the Shadow tank popped out of their sockets, threatening to explode like two over-ripe watermelons. The Shadow Hellfire looked very menacing, and yet the true tank made no attempts to run away from the expanding boss. To the contrary—Hellfire stepped up to his Shadow double, turned to me and yelled:

  “Mahan! Don’t let them get to Plinto! He’s casting ‘Explode!’”

  Harsh…A mimic with the Explode spell. Did the devs even consider a way to beat this Dungeon? The mimic copies a player and all his abilities, strengthening them several times. Explode is a suicide spell used by mobs and bosses that destroys them, taking the nearest target with them—regardless of its Hit Points. If there aren’t any players around the exploding monster, it destroys everything in a radius of thirty meters. So either you have to die or you run really fast. But even then there are some nuances. For example, if you have a Paladin’s bubble on you, you’ll survive Explode just fine. But if you don’t have a Pal, forget it!