Clans War

by Mahanenko, Vasily

  “Burn it!” wheezed Svard when the net of fog had been completed. He collapsed to the ground as did the other members of the ritual circle. The healers rushed over to heal them, but everything was in vain — all five geomancers had been sent to respawn.

  “Revive them and…FIRE!” I’d never imagined that a small girl could scream like that, but the game didn’t care about what I imagined. The raid leader’s order should have been audible to everyone, so it had to be loud and so forceful that no one would think of questioning what they had to do. Even I tried to spit some fire, but the system helpfully reminded me that Dragon’s Breath was unlocked only at Rank 50. At my Rank 16, I had nothing to contribute here. This wasn’t a scenario, after all.

  “What’s next? ” came Anastaria’s thought, returning me to the issue at hand. At some moment I had even forgotten to flap my wings, staring mesmerized at how the stone and ground burned beneath me and as a result almost fell into the pool of fire. I don’t know what game mechanics came into effect when the terrain began to change, but an unbearable heat was emanating from the lake of lava, knocking off my HP as fast as an express train. I even had to fly up a little higher to avoid burning up. The lake that had appeared was bubbling and roiling, emitting heat and threatening to incinerate anything living within itself. And yet still, the spectacle was wonderful.

  As I was about to answer Anastaria and tell her that I had no idea what to do next, my eyes caught one unexpected phenomenon. A whirlpool. Right in the center of the lake. It wasn’t very large and you couldn’t see it from the shore due to the constant bubbling, yet it was clearly funneling the lava somewhere inside Barliona. It looked so misplaced in its surroundings that for a moment I didn’t know what to do. This thing had no place being here. My epiphany came right away — I realized what I had to do next. Trusting my premonition and the speed of Stacey’s reflexes, I flew for the center of the lake, folded my wings and, just before plummeting into its depths like a stone, said telepathically:

  “Stacey, a bubble…”

  The flaming lake accepted me into its embrace like its own child. At the same time, the countdown timer indicated that I would be treated like a child for a very short time. Just 10 seconds.

  Inside, the lake of fire was completely red. I swam as hard as I could deeper and deeper, wishing to reach the end of the funnel in the allotted time, but after five seconds it was clear that I wouldn’t make it. Maybe I was just treading lava and the liquid’s density didn’t allow me to keep diving. Maybe the lake didn’t have a bottom at all. In any case — I was staring at the same homogeneous red mixture below me as above and to the right and to the left of me. Stop! The mixture ahead of me looks much lighter! It’s like there’s a void there!

  Stopping my descent, I made several broad strokes forward and, right at the last moments of my bubble, flew out of the lake of melt into some kind of room. A quick glance backwards let me know that this room had no wall: only magma that slowly crawled to fill the space. A shimmering force field I hadn’t noticed, was slowing its progress.

  “Tell me, esteemed Artificer,” sounded an irritated, female voice. I turned to see a raven-haired woman sitting in an ancient armchair that resembled a throne. She was wrapped in a Mage’s white shroud and was of indeterminate age. Between 25 and 50. Make up, particularly in-game, is a scary thing. “What made you disfigure my already ascetic abode? Are you really so daft that you couldn’t figure out how to reach me by the normal means? Why couldn’t you just craft the most barebones of artifacts?”

  I was about to open my mouth and ask where the hermit was when my eyes automatically scanned the woman’s properties — and promptly got stuck in my throat. The answer to my question was sitting on the throne right in front of me and drilling me with her angry gaze.

  The Hermit (Level N/A)

  That’s impossible! The Hermit had no level! This isn’t possible in in Barliona!

  Chapter Six. A Friendly Visit

  “Is that your best imitation of a telephone pole?” the woman inquired with irritation, and waved her hand in the direction of the wall of fire. “You ruined my abode, you invaded my sanctum, caused a bunch of noise on your way in and now you just stand there? Now you’re stiller than water, lower than grass — now you’re no longer you?”

  The Hermit waved her hand one more time and the wall of fire vanished, turning back into ordinary masonry.

  “Dan, what’s going on? ” I heard Anastaria’s whisper in my head. “The Lava has stopped moving. You’re still alive…Perhaps you should summon me over to you?”

  “No way! ” the Hermit butted into our conversation shamelessly, shocking me even further. “You’ve got no business here!”

  “Who’s that, Dan?”

  “A nightmare that flies upon wings of night!” The Hermit sounded like she meant business. “Stop distracting your husband. I still need to figure out a punishment for him! ”

  “Why a punishment?” I went on the offense, once the system glibly informed me that telepathy doesn’t work from inside the Hermitage. Stacey had been blocked. “I’d been ordered to find the Hermit. I did as ordered. There wasn’t any requirement about how exactly I was supposed to do this, so I refuse to accept your punishment. As for destroying your abode…Where?” I spread out my arms as if I weren’t sure what the lady was talking about. “And by the way, why is it so dusty here? You’re a lady and yet you live in such filth…Since when do real players play the roles of NPCs? Is this a scenario?”

  “I can send you back,” the Hermit muttered angrily and the recently rebuilt wall turned back into the fiery lake. I wonder if this happened only here at this location or if the rest of the lake had turned to lava too. I bet Stacey and the other players are scratching their heads trying to figure out what’s going on.

  What really stunned me was that I was facing a real NPC. I’d never seen it with my own eyes, but there were all kinds of rumors among the players that Corp officials act the roles of NPCs in certain scenarios, especially if they fall behind on an Imitator’s development and behavioral heuristics. At the same time, they have to provide a truthful answer if asked whether they’re an NPC or a player. An NPC will hear the question, but won’t assign it any significance. They generally don’t know anything about the existence of the real world. Over my eighteen months of play as a Shaman and three years as a Hunter, I had only encountered one NPC who knew that something lay beyond Barliona — Prontho, the boss of Pryke Mine. But even he had lost his knowledge once he had entered the wider world. Stop! Pryke! I had huge plans for it! Sakas, the convicts, the desire to hire some people. Why had I forgotten about all of this? My own experience teaches me that in the larger game world, no one’s happy to see a player with a red band. I had to take care of this problem as soon as possible.

  “I get the impression that your thoughts are far from this place,” said the Hermit, still unhappily but now without the notes of anger. “A terrible punishment threatens him yet he’s off daydreaming among the clouds. Do tell why you didn’t create an artifact like every other creature?”

  “It was too obvious,” I confessed honestly, shaking my head at the sight of the wall once more returning to its typical brick-based composition. A game’s a game, but no one had circumvented the standard game processes — transformations like these would have cost immense amounts of Mana. Or the direct intercession of some divinity that I hadn’t yet noticed around me. Or…?

  “Standard, you say…” The Hermit interpreted my pause in her own way, thought a little longer and then quickly said: “All right, we’ll assume you’ve passed the trial and appeared before me. What do you want, Shaman?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing here,” I blurted out. To be honest I was no less surprised than the Hermit. For a moment her eyebrows began crawling upwards, but she quickly took a hold of herself and put on a mask of implacability, allowing me to continue my thought. How many times have I told myself that I need to watch my tongue, but every time I
seem to forget…“I guess the right thing to do right now is to claim how great of an Artificer I am, the hope of this world and simply an ideal student, but I think that those’ll just be words. There’s no substance behind them.”

  “Explain,” the Hermit sat down on her throne and stared at me with curiosity. “The way I see it, you’ve reached the peak of Artifact crafting. The Cursed Chess of Balance, the Cursed Dog, the Blessed Visage of Eluna, the altered color of your Artifacts, the Holy Ring of Driall, the Unicorn Horn of Eluna’s Blessing, the Lovers’ Pendant…This is a very interesting path for an Artificer, so I’m unclear as to what you mean when you claim that there’s no substance to your words.”

  I inhaled and exhaled loudly. I didn’t have anything to say. It was odd, but even though a moment before I plummeted into the lake of melted rock I understood perfectly well that I needed the Hermit, now, appearing before her, doubts appeared deep inside of me. Did I really need to step onto the way of the Artificer?

  “You’re very articulate and so convincing that I bet you’ve never been rejected,” the NPC remarked sarcastically, forcing me to check her properties one more time to make sure that the Attractiveness stat was indeed still among them. I was still facing an Imitator instead of a player. Only it was some kind of a strange Imitator that I’d never encountered before. Even Geranika wasn’t this harsh.

  “I don’t have anything to say,” I shrugged. I looked around, noticed a small stool and took a seat without awaiting an invitation. If the Hermit sits in my presence, why should I stay standing? “Until I reached this place, I was entertaining the thought of setting out on the path of the Artificer. I need to complete the Chess Set.”

  “The Chess Set?” the Hermit frowned. “What Chess Set? You wish to recreate the Cursed Chess Set?”

  “What’s the Cursed Chess Set have to do with it?” It was my turn to be surprised. “I’m talking about these.”

  As I said this, I drew the dwarves out of my inventory bag and held them out to the Hermit.

  “The Chess Set of Karmadont…”

  The Hermit’s eyes grew as large as two saucers. Then, I found myself imprinted into the wall. I didn’t even have time to notice what happened. There I was standing a little away from the Hermit offering her the chess pieces — and here I am pressed by some mysterious force into the wall, so hard that I can’t even move a finger. And between these two moments, there seemed to be nothing.

  “YOU DARED TO BRING THIS KEY HERE?” the woman’s voice resounded so loudly that the cave around us trembled. And, I mean, there was a mountain over our heads! “YOU WISH TO REMIND ME OF MY DEFEAT?!”

  The hundreds of debuffs that suddenly appeared on my character caused my HP to plummet towards zero with a purpose. The Hermit didn’t give me a chance to reply, suggesting that her questions had been entirely rhetorical in nature. She had already decided that I had to be destroyed.

  LIKE HELL!

  Despite the unbelievable number of status effects, no one had prohibited me from changing into a Dragon, which I decided to do now. I needed only a moment to slip the dwarves back into my bag. My premonition was no longer screaming but rather wheezing raggedly that this entire assault was triggered by the Chess Set and the Hermit wouldn’t calm down as long as these remained in my hands. She really had something against the dwarves. I should’ve shown her the orcs instead…

  “A Dragon!” the Hermit whispered pressing me into the ground. I was instantly hit with debuffs blocking any transformation, yet I managed to accomplish the thing I wanted to do in the brief seconds the transformation afforded me — the dwarf pieces that had been plastered to my hand by some game mechanic were now simply in my hand. The offending item had been removed and now I had to establish some kind of civil channel of communication with the enraged woman who had apparently once suffered some great defeat. “How did I fail to guess this from the very beginning?! Who else could craft two cursed items in the very beginning of his way? Who else has such a mind so defiled, so corrupted that he could never imagine something holy? Of course! A follower of the Tarantulas! It was a mistake to show me this key, Dragon! You shall never leave this tomb until the end of your days. Even after that I won’t hand you over to Chaos! I shall immure you just as your master did to my husband!”

  The Hermit’s voice was so steeped in loathing and cruelty, that for several moments I forgot I was in a game and began to panic. My mind succumbed to the horror! The only thing that brought me to my senses was the game interface that continued to sway and waver at the edge of my field of vision — and the ‘Exit’ button which, thank Eluna, no one could block. I could calmly slip out into reality, make a cup of coffee and return relaxed to deal with the Hermit later.

  LIKE HELL! Ain’t I a Shaman, or what?

  “Kornik, I need help! ” I yelled telepathically into the ether, understanding perfectly well that Nashlazar had blocked my ability to do this — a fact that the system helpfully reminded me of. Well I don’t give a damn! My teacher should hear me! “KORNIK!!!”

  No this won’t do, I’ll need more volume!

  The Shaman has three hands…

  Long long ago when I was still only setting out on my Way of the Shaman, I happened to get in touch with Kornik while he was in Geranika’s captivity by using a Spirit of Air Communication. After I unlocked telepathy, I forgot about this Spirit and the capabilities it offered, but now the time had come to cash it in again. All of my Spirits had been turned off, including this one, and I still hadn’t managed to learn them all after returning to the game, but my premonition was telling me that I was moving in the right direction.

  …and behind his back a wing…

  I was compelled to sing my song in my mind, once and again ignoring the system notification about my inability to summon a Spirit that wasn’t in my spellbook. I knew what I wanted, I knew how to do it and all I had to do was keep bashing my head against the system.

  …from the heat upon his breath…

  The system refused to be bashed by my head. The devs had done a fine job blocking the Shaman’s secret skill of ultimately being able to summon whatever Spirit he wished to. Following the update, my class has once again been turned into a humdrum nothing, which no one wanted to play! How are you supposed to live a peaceful Shamanic life in Barliona if you’re constantly boxed in and kept from exercising your imagination? Who even needs this kind of treatment…?

  Blast it all to hell!

  Design mode!

  I shoved away the well-lit room that appeared before me like some old and obsolete piece of junk. I needed my native, dark version of design mode that no one would ever forbid me from working in. I can’t summon a Spirit — that’s a fact that I’ll have to abide by. But no one can keep me from crafting one!

  In design mode, the Spirit of Air Communication appeared without any questions, as if he had been standing at the entrance to my mind, waiting for his chance to slip through the erected barriers. I created the simplest ring that I could from the materials I had in my bag, unwillingly shoving one of the Diamonds intended for the Pendants in it and using the ‘Instill Essence’ skill combined the Spirit of Communication with the Diamond. This done, I examined the outcome: Under the rules of item crafting in Barliona, any new creation had to undergo a period of adaptation to the game world. Over several days, a recipe is generated for the item that permits the crafter to craft the physical item in the game. Only then can a player claim to have invented the new item.

  I didn’t need that right now.

  My goal right now wasn’t to create a ring. My goal was to get in touch with Kornik. Therefore, if I create the item here in design mode instead of out in reality, then…

  Shining candle-fire springs…

  You have created a virtual item. You may use it for 31 (Crafting) seconds. The item does not exist in the game world at large.

  “Kornik! I need your help.”

  “Mahan?!” The goblin’s surprise was evident even in telepathy. “How?
This time you’re definitely barred from communicating telepathically.”

  “I’ll explain later. I’m sending you my coordinates. I need your help.”

  “You’re with the Hermit? What the hell do you need with that lunatic?”

  “At the moment it looks like I’m about to be enslaved forever.”

  “I need twenty seconds to get ready. She won’t give you up without a fight! Hold on!”

  The time expired. The ring with the Spirit that I had used to call Kornik turned into a cloud before my eyes. It had performed its purpose in Barliona and no longer needed to exist. Twenty seconds!

  Kornik knew that the Hermit wouldn’t give me up without a fight. Odd, but that was the way it was. That means I needed to help him. What can an incapacitated player who can’t even turn into his human form do? That’s right! Only a diversion that no one expects! How I cherish you, Mr. Kristowski! The first group of players seeking their Pendants had already supplied me with Diamonds and all the necessary ingredients. All that was left was to find the time to embody the template in-game. What had happened when I was creating the template? That’s right — a big explosion! I’m certain that it won’t be any weaker now. The Hermit wants war? Excellent! She will get it! She wants me to take a normal approach and craft some artifact? I’m about to bury her in artifacts! I call on you, oh Pendants! On the count of three!

  One!

  Two!

  Just sign on the dotted line!