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

by Vasily Mahanenko

  “It happens,” I shrugged my shoulders ambiguously, mentally placing a large plus beside Svard’s name. Nine levels of Crafting! That’s a priceless addition to the labor pool! Why hasn’t Phoenix or some other clan snatched him up yet? I’d have to find out…

  “When did you unlock your design mode?”

  “Sorry, I don’t understand…”

  “You have unlocked design mode, correct?”

  “Yes.” No point denying the obvious.

  “You opened it like any other ordinary craftsman, before Level 150, when a player receives a quest. Don’t look at me like I’m the enemy of the people…Want me to tell you what your design mode looks like? You’re a Shaman, aren’t you? Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back.” The Mage’s eyes glassed over indicating that he had temporarily left the game. More accurately, not the game, but rather full immersion in it.

  “And so!” Svard returned to Barliona literally several minutes later. “Your design mode has an utterly black shell. I don’t know how the sectors containing the crafted items are arranged in it, but most likely they’re sorted by unique, rare and common items. The players’ images stand apart, if you ever made any…But, who am I kidding, of course you have! Who can forget the Cursed Chess Set! By the way, are chess sets your specialty?”

  “How?” I managed to utter, not understanding how this person had just managed to describe my unique design mode, which as it turned out, wasn’t so unique after all.

  “You haven’t figured it out on your own yet? I signed out to reality especially to look up the Shaman design mode. Remember what your screen looks like when you work with Spirits? It doesn’t remind you of anything?”

  That’s it! Remove everything unnecessary from Spirit Summoning Mode and add some shelves and you’ll have your design mode. It follows that any player can open it at any time, regardless of level. All he needs is the desire and confidence in his own abilities.

  “So you too?” I echoed surprised.

  “Of course! At Level 20, as soon as I began to study Enchantment—I donned a breastplate with +5 to all stats—and entered design mode for my first crafting session. It was only later on when I hired Phoenix to help me complete the quest, that I received formal access to design mode. Prior to that, I worked just as you do—only Mages have a silver mode shell instead of a black one. As I understand it, we’re not going to go to the Emperor?”

  “Nah, we’ll work on location. You’re not against using your workshop?”

  “With one condition: If you demolish it like you did the Jewelcrafting one—you cover the damages.”

  “You know about that too?”

  “You bet! As the owner of a workshop, I am required to attend the meetings of the craftsmen guild. The Jewelcrafting master made sure to brag about how his apprentice caused the Ying-Yang to bloom! Right in his workshop! Should I name that pupil, or will you remember it yourself?”

  “Bragged?”

  “Of course! The Ying-Yang hasn’t flowered in a long time. And no player has ever accomplished this before—I made sure to look that up! So his workshop has been fully restored, and now the gnome simply can’t wait to see his favorite apprentice again.”

  “Huh. And here I was afraid of showing up there again…”

  “Let’s try and form a unity. If it doesn’t work, I recommend you head over there!”

  “No, we need another person.” Seeing a new mail notification, I opened my mailbox and began looking for a message from Chirona: invitation to a clan…invitation to a clan…request to be introduced to Anastaria…the results of the Miss Malabar contest…WHAT?!

  Attention, attention, attention! The lovely Raniada has been declared winner of the sixteenth annual Miss Malabar beauty contest! We congratulate the winner and wish her all the best in this world! The award ceremony will take place in the Imperial palace in 4 days, 12 hours, 23 minutes, 12 seconds.

  11 seconds.

  10 seconds.

  “Miss Malabar?” I blurted out.

  “You just found out that your wife is no longer the prettiest woman on our continent?” Svard interjected. “Everyone was quite surprised when Anastaria refused to participate. She hadn’t had any competition for the past three years…And now we have Raniada…”

  I finally found the letter from Chirona containing her amulet, so, not wishing to put anything off, I invited her right to Svard’s workshop. If we were going to try this, might as well do it now.

  But why did Stacey decline the chance to receive the fourth prize for prettiest woman? And who was this Raniada?

  “I am starting to get an idea of what you’re planning on here,” said Svard as soon as Chirona entered the workshop. Nodding to her, he greeted her warmly: “It’s good to see you, Chirona. How’s the work on the palace going?”

  “Guys, let’s get right down to business,” I cut off the two masters’ conversation at its root and place the Thricinian shards on the table. Judging by the eager spark in Svard’s eyes, this was exactly what he had expected. “I brought us together with a single goal. I need to re-assemble this sculpture. Chirona, as I understood it, has already tried to do this before, but with no success. I propose we try again—as a unity.”

  “First of all,” Svard spoke up, “as I already told you, a unity requires special conditions, but as I understand it, you’ve come up with some way of circumventing them. Second of all, I don’t have Sculptor. So what am I going to do?”

  “Practice shows that many Sculptors aren’t always a good thing. I think that instead of a unity of several Sculptors, we need a Sculptor and some other craftsmen. So why not an Enchanter and a Jeweler? I can’t explain why. I suggest we just try it. As for special conditions—I have one idea, but I would need your official permission to take partial control of your avatars. Without any blocking, so that we can unite our minds.”

  “What is this nonsense?!” Chirona exclaimed. “It’s not possible to form a unity without the Sphere!”

  “Our colleague’s words contain a grain of truth,” agreed Svard. “This is not possible, but I am still interested. I grant you my official permission! With the caveat that you cannot access my private data, thoughts, memories and other things that may be considered as personal information. As for the rest—let’s try it.”

  “I’m not opposed either,” the Sculptor surrendered, “but it’s still not possible!”

  Two pairs of eyes fixed on me in expectation of my next action, but I didn’t know how to approach what I had in mind. It was good that they had given me permission to control them, but how to do this…My entire venture was based on a single postulate—during my adventure in the Dark Forest, the Imitators of the Supreme Spirits had admitted to me that they had suggested feelings and premonitions to me. Back then I had gone to the castle of the Fallen, where the whole initiation into the Dark Shamans began. What if there is something similar for players? What if one player can suggest something to another? Anastaria herself has the Sirens’ Poison, with which she can suppress the will of any player. Sure, she’ll be punished for it later, but if she obtained the players’ permission to control their avatar first and go further to the point of unity…Who knows, maybe there won’t even be any unity…maybe I’m just imagining all of this. And maybe the three of us will work as one…I don’t know! Well, whatever:

  The Shaman has three hands…

  I shut my eyes and sank into the summons. I had to ‘convince’ the player’s capsule to not only accept signals from its user, but from an additional two players located who knows where. Whether the capsule was capable of this or not remained a rhetorical question for the likes of Hamlet. But it was worth a shot…

  “YOU ARE TAKING A TREMENDOUS RISK, SHAMAN!” screamed a metallic voice in my head, almost disrupting my concentration. I cast aside all the feelings that flooded me and managed to remain in a liminal state—halfway between the Astral plane and reality. Centipedes crawled all over my skin, indicating that the voice was familiar to me. I had heard
it when the Emperor, the Dark Lord and the Guardian of the Dark Forest had sentence Midial to eternal imprisonment in the center of the world.

  “I have permission from these two sentients to partially control their consciousnesses,” I thought the first thing that came to mind. Whoever this was, he outranked the Emperor, the Dark Lord and the Guardian all together, so it’d be better to explain my actions. Why, I didn’t know, but I was certain of this. “Even so far as to control them—I want to unite our abilities to restore a shard of the Thricinian history. No more!”

  “FREE CITIZENS ARE PROHIBITED FROM MIND-CONTROLLING EACH OTHER! REMEMBER THIS!” came the bombastic reply. “IF YOU INTRODUCE A FALSE FEELING, MEMORY OR THOUGHT, YOU SHALL BE DISINCARNATED! SHAMAN MAHAN WILL BE CAST FROM THIS WORLD FOREVEROMRE!”

  “Got it,” I said. There was no further reply. Having warned me, the Imitator of Barliona, for this is who this was, had fallen silent. What interesting Imitators one finds in these parts…Wait! He hadn’t said that my idea was impossible! He merely warned me not to influence the other players! This means that…

  The Water Unifying Spirit cannot be added to the free slot.

  Attention! The Water Unifying Spirit may be summoned only for 60 minutes. Because this Spirit’s rank exceeds yours, you incur the following penalty:

  +2 to Spirituality. Total: 74.

  Penalty has been applied. You have summoned a Rank 100 Spirit. Warning—during unity your sensory filters will be fully turned off. Please note that during unity you will be feeling real pain. The Medical Imitator has been attached to your capsule, and in the event of organism failure caused by the summoning of Spirits, it will disconnect you from the unity.

  The fact of you reading this has been recorded. Should you decide to take legal action, this will be taken into account during the examination of the complaint. For players located in prisoner capsules—during unity, special properties of the Endurance, Blocking and Evasion stats do not function.

  Please confirm that you wish to summon the Water Unifying Spirit.

  I can’t say how long it took me to produce this Spirit. Several times I considered aborting the summons and asking my partners for forgiveness, but each time my donkey’s stubbornness forced me to keep forging ahead. My head grew leaden, my tongue stuck to familiar words, my eyes tried to jump from their orbits, but I went on summoning and summoning the Spirit. I didn’t even know which of the Spirits I needed. Now, as a warning of pain appeared before me, I sighed with relief. Perhaps I’m becoming a masochist, but I agree to summon the Spirit. I stuck the memory of the pain I had experienced after a similar notification into the back of my head—I’ll reproach myself later. Right now, I had to repair that statue…

  Player Svard has joined the unity

  Player Chirona has joined the unity

  “I knew it! He made it!” thought I-Svard.

  “I can’t believe it,” thought I-Chirona. “This completely obviates the need to gain reputation with the Emperor first!”

  “Guys—in 55 seconds we will suffer immense pain and might drop out. Let’s get down to business.

  I-Svard opened design mode to which I-Chirona instantly added the sculpture fragments. At long last I saw the true design mode, as the developers had imagined it. Everything was full of colors, shelves, tables, various charts and graphs; there was even a link to the personal bag and the surrounding world so that you wouldn’t have to leave the design mode in order to embody the item. In effect, this was a virtual room outfitted with anything you needed. If you want to embody something, simply find the item in your bag or the space around you, select it and that’s it! The item appears in design mode just like that! Damn! I want one like this!

  “Ready,” said I-Chirona and instantly ‘felt’ my thoughts: “Filling the empty spaces.”

  “Five seconds until the pain wave. Get ready, it might affect everyone,” I warned the two players mentally.

  “Hm…Mahan was right to bring me. The stones need to be enchanted before being mounted. Take a look, Chirona—what if here…”

  I didn’t hear what I-Svard said because right at that moment the first sixty seconds of our unity ended—and with it came the first wave of pain…

  “It’s going to be like this every minute?” I-Chirona asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I thought helplessly, understanding that at most I would be able to handle several more waves. When the Little Turtle was chewing me, when I was removing the arrows, when the shadows were beating me, even when I was accelerating in my duel with Shiam—all of that it turned out was quite bearable. This pain was the same every time—crushing, tearing, burning. If you focused your mind, you could ignore it for a bit…but at the moment…Each muscle tore with a terrible creak, only to spring back into a whole with a disgusting ‘twang.’ I was being cooked and frozen at the same time, I was…A shudder ran along my body and to my astonishment I became aware of my own heart, beating frantically in my chest, while my eyes, when they could see again, were confronted with the following notification:

  Attention! The pain level has exceeded the allowable limit for your organism. Estimated organism status—85% of nominal. Unity mode will be terminated at the threshold of 50%. We request that you cease summoning the Water Unifying Spirit as this is dangerous to your health!

  “Ready!” thought I-Svard as soon as I regained some semblance of awareness. “But something is still missing!”

  Focusing on the sculpture, I was stupefied. Although, no, I wasn’t stupefied—this wasn’t my feeling. I frowned with dissatisfaction from its abnormality—the Danrei holding a long stick that resembled a spear looked unnatural. He needed to inhale a touch of life and…

  “I understand,” said I-Chirona, “I’ll fix it. I can see it now myself.”

  “Uh-huh. Me too,” echoed I-Svard. “Enchantments of life and…”

  Attention! The pain level has exceeded the allowable limit for your organism. Estimated organism status—65% of nominal. Unity mode will be terminated at the threshold of 50%. We strongly urge you to cease summoning the Water Unifying Spirit as this is dangerous to your health!

  Besides my heart—which I no longer merely sensed, but knew for certain existed—I was finding myself short of breath. This was especially odd since players in Barliona breathe strictly reflexively. In-game, any asthmatic may hold his breath for several minutes as long as he has the requisite stats. Thus, what was happening to me now was entirely out of the ordinary. But okay—I’d look into this later.

  “It’s still not right,” I-Svard assessed the sculpture and pursed his lips from dissatisfaction. “Some tiny detail is missing, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.”

  “I know,” I replied. “What we need right now is a Shaman, and luckily I have one handy.”

  Imposition of Essence…A Shamanic ability that I had earlier added to my main list of spells. This ability made the Shaman class into a real beast, if one knew how to wield it properly. Discarding any thoughts about an imminent wave of pain—I couldn’t bear another one—I began to impart the ability of motion onto the sculpture, or to be more precise, the pieces of rock held together by solvents and spells. If you were to ask me how the rocks were supposed to move within the complete sculpture, I’d be at a loss for an answer. All I knew was that they had to be, if not living, then at least not dead. I didn’t understand what I wanted to accomplish myself, but I-Svard somehow supported me, adding spells and guiding my actions…

  Attention! The pain level has exceeded the allowable limit for your organism. Estimated organism status—55% of nominal. Unity aborted.

  “God-daaaamn!” slowly, as if spelling out each word, said Svard. System notifications were rushing past my eyes, but I didn’t have the time to focus on them—I was feeling ill and it was only through sheer will that I even hung on to my consciousness.

  “Take the statue and the creator!” An unfamiliar voice said through the roaring in my ears. I tried to protest that the statue was mine, but the world
around me treacherously filled with red and went black. Darkness descended on all…

  * * *

  “Greetings, oh friend of my people,” a barely audible, older voice reached me through the scattering darkness. Opening my eyes with difficulty, I found myself lying on a small couch. The dusk in the room, barely mitigated by two dim lamps, created an atmosphere of secrecy and mystery. Lamps in general are not common to Barliona—torches represent 99.99% of the illumination market with the remainder belonging to candles and kindling. It looked now like lamps, powered by magic, had made some inroads. “You have done a great deed. Not only did you recover the shards, but you recreated a lost history. I wish to thank you personally. Light!”

  The entire room was now illuminated by more of the dim lamps, casting enough light for me to get a look at the person speaking to me. An ancient Level 500 Thricinian was reclining on a sofa that resembled a giant armchair. I’d wager my head that I was facing the head of the blue-skinned race. To be precise, the creature on the sofa had lost his blue color and become gray, wrinkled and sickly. His faded white eyes were looking in my direction, and yet I felt no gaze—I had the impression that the Danrei was blind.

  “During our entire stay on this planet,” the Thricinian leader began speaking slowly, as if each word cost him a great effort, “only one creature has succeeded in restoring an item of my people—Karmadont, the future leader, a man who was fated to unite all the peoples into a single Empire.”

  Karmadont? In addition to everything else, the Emperor was a master craftsman? That’s a bit of news. I’ll have to ask Stacey or Barsa to dig up the history of this persona—I should have read up on the first Emperor of Malabar a long while back.