As soon as I reached the window, I turned back into my human form again. It wasn’t a great idea to waste what few minutes of Dragon Form I had to check out what was inside the tower. The internal spire was still rotating, though now I could make out a spiral staircase that ran along the inside perimeter of the outer tower. In actual fact, this staircase led to two bridges, which were located at different levels and led to the center. I began to grasp the overall design of this obstacle: Somewhere down there, there was an entrance after all, by which we could reach the spire, go up several floors, emerge through a door to a bridge, ascend the spiral staircase to the next bridge and re-enter the rotating spire. Then we’d just repeat this operation until we reached the very top of the spire. I couldn’t see what was up there from where I was sitting, but I did notice several more windows on the same level as me. This meant that someone in the spire needed light from this level in order to….Yeah, okay! It wouldn’t be a good idea to break into someone’s place for a visit, so I turned into a Dragon again and soared up between the two towers. Every single manual and guide for Barliona claims that players aren’t allowed to fly on their own—that they must use pets to do so, but the manuals don’t mention Dragons, so we’ll just assume that I’m not breaking any rules. In the end, this is my Dungeon and I can behave however I like…
I crossed the fifty meters that separated me from the top in a minute. All I really had to do was jump from bridge to bridge and perch to perch, since there wasn’t any space to flap my wings freely. And when I reached the top, I was rewarded with the sight of three open chests…
Achievement earned!
First Completion of the Skrooj Dungeon.
Achievement reward: +20% to all resources mined.
Message for the player: in five months’ time you will be teleported to an audience with the Emperor of Malabar. You may take two companions with you; for this you will have to give them the invitation letter in the course of five months. You may obtain the invitations in any branch office of Barliona Bank.
Level gained…
Twelve notifications about new levels that I’d gained flashed before my eyes as quickly as a passing express train, but I did not pay any attention to them. My entire being was concentrated on these three chests—which were filled to the brim with precious stones, gold bullion, platinum and several diadems. As Ishni had told me, a complete set of ingredients for the Chess Set was waiting for me in the Dungeon, but he’d never mentioned the additional loot. What had I just stumbled on?
“Do you understand that if the boys return right now and don’t receive an achievement of their own, they’ll have our scalps? By the way, I just gained 10 levels, so thank you! Did you find your gems?”
“Yeah,” I replied and, dismissing the chat, began to empty the contents of the coffers. At the moment, my inventory bag had 260 slots, each of which could hold a stack of 40 items. In this sense at least, the developers had departed from reality to do the players a favor. Even though my bag was more than half full, I should still be able to fit everything in it. Otherwise my menagerie, which was currently swimming in the coffers before me like the Dungeon’s duck-namesake, would get completely out of hand and start a riot. By the way! Stacks of Malachite, Lapis Lazuli, Marble and other low-level gems can be sent immediately to Leite for storage in the castle warehouse. I’d sort everything else myself…
When I finished stuffing my bag (without even bothering to check the diadems’ properties), I took out my mailbox, wrote a letter to my treasurer and attached twelve stacks of stones. You can’t store more than 60 items in your mail—a limitation of the game world—but the system treats one stack as one item. Very convenient arithmetic…
This player is not currently in the game. The letter will be delivered later.
This message was so unexpected and simultaneously shocking, that I didn’t even react as three black, red-eyed humanoids appeared on the tower’s roof. Shrieking wildly and utterly ignoring me, they rushed to the empty chests, paused above them, bellowed like mad buffaloes, turned to me, bared their sharp teeth…and Barliona ceased to exist for me for twelve hours as I was sent to the nearest respawn point.
The last thought that flickered across my fading consciousness was, “Et tu Brute!”
* * *
“Welcome back from the dead!” As soon as I reappeared in Barliona, Anastaria’s voice immediately appeared in my head. “Evolett is super pissed at you for stealing the Dungeon loot from him!”
“Stacey! Leite is free!” I blurted out my thought, deciding to stay silent about Clutzer. Since he made it known to me that he’s no longer a prisoner, I’ll deal with his case separately. But Leite was another matter—he was the treasurer, had full access to the clan coffers, and now it turned out that he was not who he claimed to be…Personally, I don’t like this bit of news one bit—what if it turns out that all the money is gone?…Of course there’ll be the contract, but it was a cinch for a capable manager to find a loophole! Now more than ever, I needed Stacey’s help. She was smart as hell, while I was utterly confused and did not know what to do. I had finally decided that if there was anyone I could trust in this world it would be Anastaria.
“What do you mean? Hang on, I’ll summon you to Altameda in a second and we’ll talk normally! Also, Leite is right here. I suggest we let him join our conversation. Give me five minutes—I’ll go get the Mages…”
I sat down on the boulders of the respawn point and tried once again to think through all these goings on. All the other players had had twelve game hours to make their decisions, but my respawn had passed in a flash.
And so!
Clutzer and Leite are free people. It stood to reason that Eric was free too. Why not? The buyout amount for Leite and Eric was fifteen and ten million, respectively, so …
Stop!
Leite’s buyout was only 15 million! What if…No, no…the clan’s budget remained at its previous level…Although, my treasurer earned a salary of about one million per month…Stacey where are you and your Mages?
“Dan, you threw me off!” Anastaria’s thought occurred to me as if she’d heard me. “I can just summon you myself! Hang on. I’ll teleport to Altameda and bring you over. Leite is already there…Ten seconds…”
Your other half wishes to summon you to her location. Do you accept?
“…And that’s how things stand,” Leite said, finishing his confession and staring at me guiltily. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or rejoice at what I’d just heard. The one good thing was that the treasurer had not betrayed me. Moreover, he had put himself in such a position that he was now iron-bound to our clan. But still—I hated the fact that he’d pulled off such a maneuver on his own, without asking for my help…
When I allowed the Warrior to hire his wife—he was still a prisoner. By that point, as I had reckoned correctly, Leite was earning about a million gold per month. In addition to his wife’s contribution, the total income of his household was around 1.5 million. And then Leite decided to take a loan from the Bank of Barliona to finally secure his freedom. He simply wanted to go for a walk with his wife once in a while, under a real sky—plus it turned out that my treasurer’s child had grown up quite a bit too. He received approval for the loan and he paid for his release from Barliona just three days ago. Every day now, according to the agreed upon schedule with the rehabilitation center, he was attending his rehabilitation class. Given that the Warrior had been in Barliona for a mere 18 months, his rehabilitation period was only two weeks. It was just yesterday that he was at his last therapy session and…When I asked him why he hadn’t borrowed the money from the clan or from me, Leite merely shook his head and mumbled something about wanting it to be a surprise. It’s no good, he explained, when the treasurer is a convict and is in danger of being sent back to the mines at any moment. Now that the monthly payment on his loan was about 1.5 million—such is the draconian interest for in-game credit—he would do everything in his power to improve the clan’s
financial condition. You could say that now, he was motivated up to his tonsils…End quote…
“We better warn Eric and Clutzer to speak to us before they try to do something similar,” I told Stacey, nodding in the direction of the door that Leite had just departed through. “That was a pretty shocking piece of news…”
“I’d say so…A desperate step…A loan, rehab therapy, your distrust…Did you see the giants’ quest?”
“Eh…Not yet. I guess I’ve been occupied. Shall we take a glance? Although…You were right when you said that we already know the next letters in the verses. Have you sent anyone to check the coordinates yet?”
“Not only did I send someone, but I already found the entrance,” smiled the girl, relishing the wide-eyed astonishment on my face. “All that’s left is to craft the green and blue knights and that’s it—the key to the tomb will be ready…”
“You found it?” I cried, completely losing my head. “And you waited to tell me?”
“I asked you about the giants for a reason—I only received the exact coordinates of the entrance six hours ago. When you respawned—I was actually there, checking that it was indeed the place. I’m sending you the coordinates, a video and a portion of the updated map—the entrance is right here…”
About two hundred kilometers from Sintana, in the center of Elma, almost on the border between Kartoss and Malabar, located high in the mountains was a small plateau. Covered in a permanent fog, it was safely hidden from view—unless you knew that the slope of the mountain with the proud name of Kaltarnix jutted out to form a field, you’d never stumble on it by accident. You couldn’t call the plateau large—it was no more than a flat, round field about fifty meters in diameter, lying flush against the mountain. As the camera filming shifted a little and floated over to the mountain, the outlines of a door came into focus. An inscription was carved upon it: ‘Karmadont.’
“I spent three hours trying to get inside of it by every means possible—I had high-level miners try to demolish the door, the walls beside it, the stone floor of the field. I tried to blow up the door with the help of Mages—all in vain. We couldn’t even break off a tiny piece. This area is blocked at the system level and can be opened only with a key which is the six different figurines of the Karmadont Chess Set…That’s my spousal report then. Wait, that’s a lie. Also, I was with Nashlazar and she taught me to fight in the form of a Siren—check it out…what do you think?”
Anastaria turned into her Siren Form and I couldn’t help but gasp—the girl’s entire body…um…the Siren’s entire body was covered in glittering armor which reduced all damage taken by 40%.
“Whoa,” I managed.
“You bet! I am now…But wait, Dan, let me get back to the door, okay? The key is the key, but I can’t help but try a couple more tricks. I have this Thief friend, who has an incredibly high Lockpicking skill. I want him to have a go at the place. Who knows, maybe it’ll pan out…”
“Yes, of course,” I managed again. I don’t know why but lately I’m having trouble coming up with something to say. I should probably deal with this habit.
“In that case, see you later,” Anastaria kissed me, activated the portal and, before departing reminded me: “Tomorrow, I’ll sign out to reality for about a week. Try not to break Barliona while I’m gone—I’m quite fond of it.”
Ding! You’ve received 433 new messages. Would you like to read them?
Collapsing in my rocking throne, I shut my eyes and snarled—how was one supposed to live with all these people bothering me constantly? Who needed me now? For what?
“Can you introduce me…,” “Can you give me…,” “Can you lend me…,” “Can you introduce me…,” “Can you invite me…”—right…and then how did this last letter squeeze through all my inbox filters? I looked over it once again and grinned: “Inveite me unto ur clan. I will be the stongest player you have. I’ll wipe out all the…” So it looks like the mail filters don’t account for spelling mistakes. And these are surely purposeful typos too—calculated to sneak the letter past my filters and stand out among the remaining mass of players. Barliona doesn’t allow grammatical errors by default—when all is said and done, we don’t write the text ourselves: We think the thought and the system extracts the words and formats them into text. You really do need to go through a lot of trouble to write poorly in this game. You have to buy a fairly expensive piece of paper, write the text by hand using your calligraphy skill, confirm that the errors are acceptable…It’s a good thing that Barsa explained all the finer subtleties of the Barliona playerbase to me. Otherwise, I’d delete this letter without a second thought. Forwarding this little marvel to Barsa, I had almost finished sorting through the remaining avalanche of mail when I came across a letter with a rather grandiloquent subject line: “In Private Confidence—To the Head of the Legends of Barliona from the Head of the Nav Clan…”
Why look at that! ‘In Private Confidence’ and to the ‘Head’! I wonder what this Spiteful Gnum wants from me? The name sounds familiar…
Hey Mahan! Sorry for such a pompous subject line but otherwise the Imitator might reject this. You probably don’t remember, but we met recently. Rumor has it that you need craftsmen who can work with Imperial-level resources. I’ll mention right off that I’m not trying to join your clan. I’m not interested. But I am interested in offering you a deal: You send me a stack of Imperial Steel and the reagents in the list attached to this letter, and I, in turn, will craft something useful for your castle from them. My only condition is no contracts. We do it all only on trust. If I’m a crook, you lose some valuable resources. If not, you’ll receive the product without paying a penny for the work. Make your decision, Shaman!
We met recently? I honestly spent some time going over the people whom I’d seen or spoken with the last, say, couple of days, but Spiteful Gnum did not show up among them. An open and shut case then—yet another conman, trying to pull off the big con. Why test the waters with ordinary ingots of gold or steel? This one goes straight for the Imperial Steel! Who cares that you need to be at least at Level 400 in your profession to work with that material—just send it over and that’s it! I’m so tired of these players…
And yet, well aware that I shouldn’t bother, I wrote Gnum a reply:
Greetings! Losing so many resources over some harebrained proposal from a person I don’t remember meeting is overkill. Prove to me that you are worthy of such trust…
In the beginning, when the letters asking for resources began to roll in, I would honestly ask people what they needed them for and what I’d receive in return. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the beggars immediately vanished at that juncture, and only one out of a thousand was offering something that could be of use to the clan. Eventually, I stopped responding to such messages by configuring the spam filter accordingly, but Spiteful Gnum managed to sneak by. Okay, let’s see what he’s got…
“Fleita, where you at?” Having finished with my mail, I immediately called my pupil. I didn’t feel like staying in the castle—or starting to craft the War Lizards, despite the fact that the entrance to the Tomb had already been discovered—so I decided to travel to Pryke Mine and then to Farstead.
“Me? I’m at a party—Evolett invited me to his castle. You’ll never believe it—I’ve been invited to join the Dark Legion! And not just as a Recruit—they’re going to make me a Raider! I’m now a Raider of the Dark Legion! No one will believe me when I tell them!”
“I see…Is, uh, Evolett there by any chance?” When I brought Fleita with us on the Dungeon raid, I never for a moment doubted that the Priest would chat her up in his spare time to find out who she is, figure out what her relationship to me is and invite her to join his clan. After Anastaria, Evolett was the second person whom I was willing to trust (at 60% confidence), and that trust was based on mutually beneficial cooperation, so I saw nothing wrong with Fleita joining the Dark Legion. The only surprising thing was the rank of Raider they’d assigned the Lev
el 67 Shaman. As far as I recall, Evolett pays the Raiders a salary even if they don’t go to the Dungeon. In my view, ‘buying’ the girl this way was too much. She is still a student after all. What if she gets sucked into the game, quits her studies and real life, and plunges headlong into Barliona? The youth are the youth…I really hope that her parents are watching after her, but it wouldn’t do any harm if I spoke with her either…
“No, I’m at the training ground at the moment. As the local trainers explained to me—I need to catch up to all the levels I gained recently. Why didn’t you warn me that I need to focus on skills first and levels later? And in general—this is all your fault for taking me on that raid!”
“If you keep whining,” I snapped, “I won’t take you anywhere anymore.”
“Actually, what I meant to say, was thank you,” came the astonishing response, utterly unrelated to the earlier direction of our conversation. “Are you calling me for something? Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes, I wanted to propose we visit this one place,” I drawled, deciding to myself that Pryke Mine was out of the question—at the moment, at any rate. “But since you seem so busy, we’ll put off our travels.”
“I’m not busy!” the girl yelped immediately.
“In that case, I’ll be waiting for you in Altameda in an hour.”
“But…I don’t have the money for a Portal Scroll…”
“I’ll have you summoned in an hour, just be ready,” I replied wearily, hung up, took out another amulet and stared at it for a minute, trying to decide what to say to Evolett. In essence, I need to give him the money I owe him, apologize, and…That’s it! That’s what I’d do…
The Karmadont Chess Set (The Way of the Shaman: Book #5) LitRPG series Page 12