The Phantom Castle (The Way of the Shaman: Book #4) LitRPG series

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “You decided to burn the last bridge with the top clan in Malabar?” Stacey asked with astonishment. “How’d you get a contract like that with dad?”

  “He owed me,” I replied, shrugging and dialing my amulet yet again. “Stacey, we’ve received a challenge. Either we accept it or we flee somewhere far and stay there for a long time. I’m getting tired of fleeing lately…”

  “Hi Mahan,” said Evolett, hearing my last words and realizing who was calling him. “As I understood it, tomorrow’s battle can’t be avoided?”

  “No. Moreover, I need your assistance in one other piece of business. Tell me: How much would you charge me for three scrolls of ‘Armageddon’ and three ‘volunteers’ who’d be prepared to cast them?”

  Chapter 10. Storming the Castle

  “Dan, do you have a moment?”

  “I’m completely free until six,” I said and looked quizzically at Stacey who was lying beside me. The proper thing to do was to gather my strength and explore Bigeye’s cave—there were probably some interesting items in it. And yet, after my negotiations over the amulet, I felt a bit exhausted. Evolett could only ‘scrounge up’ a single scroll of Armageddon, and he wanted seven million gold for it—to recoup the costs of the magic he’d sunk in it. “Why? What’s up?”

  “I wanted to go over the verses we received. Have you noticed anything odd about them?”

  “Uhhh…”

  “Okay, here, I’m sending you a scroll. Go back to your logs, and copy out the eight orc verses you received—but make sure to copy them exactly as they are in your journal. You never sent them to me anyway. After that, I’ll show you something I noticed about the verses I have.”

  Unfolding the paper, I read over the twelve verses on it, including the four ogre ones we’d just received. None of it made much sense, so digging around in my journal, I copied over the eight missing verses and returned the whole scroll to Stacey.

  “Excellent. Let’s look at what we have,” said Stacey, unfolding the sheet of paper and rubbing her hands in anticipation of something extraordinary:

  The day when the sky was covered with darkness and great hailstones rained down,

  The Great Creator of Things realized that his Hour had come…

  And because he could not die, he departed to his Rest,

  Having sealed the doors to himself for Ever, disturbed by no one to be.

  In a cave he Enshrined all he knew, possessed and created.

  And the ONE who finds the way to him shall be blessed

  By the Tandem of gods. Karmadont found the way.

  Born of a servant, an Emperor He became in the midst of the Shining Mountains.

  And the day when the world knew that a great one had come,

  Near the River, Each day in whose waters there meet

  Dewren, Exalted by a hundred creators of human souls

  Forever proclaiming love and prosperity and

  Owren, her Twin brother, who spent his Whole life in creating

  Unique living plants, which ‘Overed the world with their beauty,

  Rests a man whose Fate’s Inextricably linked to the world,

  The world which was left by the Dragons forever…

  Birthing and nurturing the fire like a Virtual mother

  The source of danger, Evil, doubt and fear.

  Your way lies through Five warrior-giants,

  The only One who craves a quaff of brackish waters.

  “What do you think?”

  “It ain’t Shakespeare,” I quipped.

  “Uh-huh. Notice the strange capitalization of some words? Who capitalizes ‘Enshrined?’ Or ‘Inextricably?’ Most tellingly, why spell ‘covered’ without the first letter? Now spell out all the upper case letters that are neither at the beginning of a line nor at the beginning of a proper noun.”

  “T-H-R-E-E-O-N-E…No way! Three-one-three-two-five-fo…four!”

  “Six of the eight numbers from the X-coordinate in the coordinate grid. Without even knowing the last two numbers, we can assume the general region where we need to search for the cave. Look on the map…”

  Opening the map and charting a virtual line, I couldn’t help but swear a little—almost the entire length of my red line was occluded by fog—a part of Barliona I hadn’t yet explored.

  “Okay, don’t swear so. Here, I’m sending you a present for Valentine’s Day. You’re not the only one who knows how to give gifts.”

  You have received a portion of the map of Malabar and the Free Lands. Do you wish to load it?

  A portion of the map? Sure I’ll load it…it can’t hurt.

  Map of Malabar and the Free Lands updated. Area of Malabar currently explored—87%. Area of the Free Lands currently explored—32%.

  “What do you think of my present?” Stacey asked coquettishly and burst out laughing seeing my reaction. I have to admit, my face must have looked pretty funny indeed—I was in an utter stupor. What the girl had just sent me could fetch 20–30 million gold at auction! And considering how quickly Stacey had sent me the map, she hadn’t even bothered to cut anything out. “A single request—please delete the areas marked as ‘Phoenix zone’ right away. You won’t be allowed in anyway and it wouldn’t be good at all if this info got out. But okay, go ahead and open the map. You can figure out what you want to delete and keep later on. Dan! Stop stuttering! You’ve had full access to my map forever now. You could’ve made a copy a long time ago. Better, tell me—why did you restrict me from copying the Kartossian part of your map?”

  “I had an agreement with Evolett,” I droned, trying to come to my senses. There’s an excellent present, there’s a perfect one and there’s an imperial one…but I’d have to introduce a whole new category to classify Anastaria’s present…An imperial one wouldn’t even come close to this.

  “Got it—I’ll go prostrate myself before my uncle…Have you opened the map?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look, the last two coordinates give us a margin of error of about 300 meters, so we can ignore them for the moment. It’s clear from the first eight verses that we should be looking in the mountains. This meridian intersects only one mountain range. Elma—the mountain range stretching from the deepest south of the content right to the extreme north. In the morning its peaks sparkle like lanterns.”

  “The river as you and I already discovered is called the Altair.”

  “Correct. Now the new four verses—I’ll bet my right hand that they’re talking about a volcano! The lava flows past five huge peaks, pouring either into the ocean or the Altair River!”

  “I’m not so sure about this,” I said after a little thought. “Look—nurturing the fire like a Virtual mother. I agree that this sounds like a volcano, but…Tell me, have you ever heard of underground volcanoes? Ones that do not erupt to the surface?”

  “Hmm…Maybe you’re right…No definitely! Look—Sintana is also located in Elma! If you are correct, then this eruption is inside the mountain, which the dwarves are afraid of! I’ll find out if there’s any info about this. In that case, the dark waters are neither the ocean nor the Altair River. They’re subterranean waters! Where there’s no light!”

  “All we have to do is craft the other three figurines, obtain the rest of the coordinates and then we’ll be able to travel to the tomb,” I said, infected with Stacey’s excitement.

  “The first three numbers of the Y coordinate won’t help us. I can tell them to you right now—1, 1, and 2. So we will have to find an entrance…Okay. I’m going to find out about the lava and then we’ll give it more thought. We need those Giants ASAP!”

  “Uh-huh…All I have to do is find some time to make them. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go look around that cave. No one has ever been here, so maybe I can find something interesting.”

  “I’m with you,” the girl said, jumping to her feet. “We’ll pocket the treasure together!”

  Bigeye’s cave was not so big—a step here, a few steps there and several s
kips across. And there was such an evident absence of eye-pleasing treasure chests brimming with loot that it seemed like the boss decided to mock the players who had passed all the obstacles. Us, that is.

  “Nothing,” Anastaria said sadly, activating a curious amulet she had that would identify hidden treasure. “Neither gold, nor items. Nothing but a barren cave…”

  “That’s impossible, Stacey.”

  “Well, this amulet of true sight reveals all hidden passages, vaults and troves, yet it’s showing nothing here at all.”

  “Maybe there’s some drawing on the walls? Or on the floor?” I asked, refusing to accept the demise of all my hopes in reanimating my internal menagerie, which—following the outcome of the Dragon’s Dungeon—had fallen into a deep coma. My poor Hoarding Hamster still refused to come to terms with his failure to get his little paws on the items the devs had shown me. And though Greed Toad croaked with satisfaction from her acquisition of Borhg’s Gladir, she did so a bit too quietly and uncertainly, almost automatically and out of habit. The menagerie had fallen into a comma and needed to be reanimated.

  “Still nothing,” the girl replied a minute later, having carefully examined all the surfaces by torchlight. “Any other suggestions?”

  “I pass. It looks like the reward here are the verses that the player receives. No doubt someone decided that no material item can compare to such artistic largess.”

  “It’s too bad you weren’t recording. What if Bigeye displayed some symbols as he was reading the poem.”

  “I was recording, but I’ve already watched the video and there’s nothing in it but his voice and a bunch of swamp slime. After all, he’d dipped me up to my ears in the wate…Wait!”

  I stopped in my tracks. Bigeye had not recited the verses in the same voice that he’d used to demand the key! And earlier—both the orcs and the dwarves had appeared with the verses! So why hadn’t the two little ogres shown up this time around? The devs decided not to introduce the kids? I mean, like it or not, they had been worked into the lore by the Plague of the Dragons and, well…

  I took out the figurines from my bag and placed them on the ground. There were no changes, either to their properties or to their appearance; however, I felt that I was moving in the right direction! And so—the key to the boss was the recitation from Venus and Adonis. But that only governed the relationship between the player and the item. What had to be done to activate the relationship between an item and an NPC?

  “Dan?” Stacey grew curious when I sat down beside the figurines and began to meditate on what I needed to do. Verses? Won’t work. A fairy tale? Won’t work. A nursery rhyme? No…

  Maybe I should ask someone who would definitely know? Well why not?

  “OUR GREETINGS TO YOU, BROTHER!” unlike my earlier visits to the Astral plane, this time the Supreme Spirits of both Worlds initiated the conversation on their own. “WE ARE WATCHING OVER YOUR PROGRESS AND WISH TO WARN YOU THAT YOU SHOULD NOT LET YOUR REASON CLOUD YOUR FEELINGS. BE CAREFUL WITH ALTAMEDA!”

  “Careful? Is something amiss with it?”

  “KNOWLEGE ONLY STRENGTHENS REASON. TRUST YOUR SENSES AND FOLLOW THE WAY OF THE SHAMAN!” replied the Supreme Spirits without any ambiguity and with plentiful citations to various regulatory documents that would clarify any forthcoming events. I wish they hadn’t said anything at all! “YOU ARE NOT YET READY TO UNDERGO YOUR TRIAL. ONCE YOUR WATER SPIRITS REACH LEVEL TEN, WE WILL SUMMON YOU OURSELVES.”

  “I bow my head before the wisdom of the Supreme Ones,” I began, mentally underscoring the need to level up my spirits as quickly as possible. I’d have to redouble my efforts…“but I need assistance. How may I summon the essences imprisoned in the Karmadont Chess Set?”

  “THERE ARE NO ESSENCES INSIDE THE CHESS SET! THE CHESS SET IS BUT A KEY. IF YOU SEEK THOSE WHOM THE CHESS PIECES SYMBOLIZE, YOU MUST RENOUNCE ALL SELF-IMPOSED LIMITATIONS!”

  “Dan, can we make a deal that you’ll warn me before you vanish who knows where?” Anastaria rebuked me as soon as the Supreme Spirits had kicked me, like some errant kitten, from the Astral plane. For crying out loud! I’m almost a Harbinger already, and they still treat me like this! “Even telepathy didn’t work: ‘You may not summon your other half when it is in the Astral plane,’” added Anastaria in a cartoon voice that was at once metallic and whiny.

  “Sorry. I simply have this huge suspicion that…well…we need to find a way to summon the essences of these two ogres. And I believe it’s best if we do this right here. That’s why I went to the Astral plane—I was looking for advice. But, uh, I guess I should be careful what I ask for.”

  “Why? What’d they say?”

  “That the Dark Forest and the dilemma it posed—was a lovely flower compared to Altameda. Back then, the Supremes didn’t even bother to warn me of any trouble, and yet now they spelled it out: ‘follow the way of the Shaman.’”

  “The way of the Shaman?” Anastaria was thinking of questions faster than I could answer them.

  “If I only knew…According to the Supremes, I’m following it. How and why—remain a giant puzzle, as far as I’m concerned. I have several thoughts, but they are all connected with working at the level of premonition. And the problem there is that, once you hit Level 100, a portion of your feelings are generated by the system, in order to confuse the player. So basically, I don’t know what I have to do. What’s clear is that we can’t leave here yet.”

  “You need the essences of these two ogres and you don’t know how to summon them, right?” Stacey clarified once more.

  “Yeah. If they were Spirits—I could probably summon them, but sentient essences are something else…”

  “Let me try. Only, I won’t promise that it’ll work,” the girl said enigmatically and her singing filled the cave. Stacey was trying to summon her goddess. As I recall, she had only managed to accomplish this once before, despite the fact that every manual out there said that Paladins had no such powers. Once though, Stacey had surpassed herself, becoming a Lieutenant in the process, so why not try it one more time? The only thing I was wary of was—if Eluna really did deign to appear—what if she become enraged that Stacey had dared summon her over such an insignificant affair?

  “Hello, my daughter.” A pleasant waft of wind embraced us from all sides at once, instantly dispersing the bog stench that we’d already gotten used to. “You have summoned me?”

  “Yes, oh mother,” said Anastaria, bowing her head. I was doing my best to avert my gaze, knowing that once I saw the goddess’s face up close, any other girl, even Anastaria, would seem completely ordinary. Why tempt myself unnecessarily? “My spouse and I require your help.”

  “I know what you need,” said Eluna pensively and I noticed blades of grass squeezing forth from beneath the rocks. Even deep beneath the swamp, nature reveled in its proximity to the Highest Light. “But, alas, I cannot help you. Those whose essences enchant the Karmadont Chess Set, have forever departed the cycle of rebirth. Neither I nor Tartarus have them.”

  “Then forgive me for summoning you over such a trifle, mother,” Stacey bowed her head even further, as impossible as it seemed.

  “You did the right thing, my daughter, in acting against the rules. I had already begun to consider how I could contact you and your spouse when you summoned me. Your call came at the right moment, so I have no reason to be displeased with you. To the opposite, I will take you with me right this instant to my chambers, so that you may continue your training. My Paladins have long since been in need of a Captain, and you have proven that the duties of a Lieutenant are too light for you. Mahan, is there something about my sandals I should know?”

  “Dan…I’ve been granted a quest…Unique…Class-based…It’ll take up to two weeks and allows me to sign out to reality once a day for three hours…Daaan?” Stacey did not speak the last word so much as cried it. On the one hand, this was a personal invitation from the goddess. On the other hand, there was the battle tomorrow, and the girl understood v
ery well what her absence would mean.

  “There will be many other battles, whereas a chance like this…I say you should take it.” I would have been an utter jerk to even ask Stacey to reconsider. It was not so much my reputation with the goddess that was in question here as my reputation with the girl herself.

  “Forgive me, Eluna—I do not dare look at you.” In my attempt to conceal my bitterness at the realization of tomorrow’s failure, I suddenly began to gush with sincerity. “I am married to the loveliest woman in this world, and I do not want to test myself unnecessarily by unwittingly comparing her to you. I’m not made of steel. Plus, you have very nice sandals. I’ve never seen any like them in Barliona.”

  “You are the same old Shaman, I see.” Divine laughter filled the cave. Dust began to fall from the ceiling, illuminating the bare rocky walls of the cavern with a soft light. A quick glance at the properties of this odd dust forced me to do a double take: ‘Divine pollen.’ A unique ingredient for all professions, which could replace absolutely any ingredient in the game! Even if Stacey ends up leaving right now, I know exactly what I’ll be doing for the next few hours—crawling around the cave on my knees, a flask in hand. “I have very little time, so I will tell you just one thing—say no to Altameda.”

  “Why?” The question burst forth on its own accord, even though I already knew the answer:

  “Even I cannot tell you. Doing so would tear the fabric of the world itself.”

  Practically word for word! I wonder—did the developers calculate my psychological type and were now spurring me in their desired direction? The Supremes tell me that I should follow the Way of the Shaman. Eluna tells me to leave the castle alone. Why, what is it about Urusai that the goddess herself has descended to give us this warning? And take Stacey out of the equation for a few weeks! Eluna knows very well that I won’t dare go to the castle without the girl. Even with Geyra’s boys, there’s nothing for me to do in the castle on my own, and I’m not wealthy enough to hire any mercenaries.