The Karmadont Chess Set (The Way of the Shaman: Book #5) LitRPG series Read online

  The Karmadont Chess Set

  a novel

  by Vasily Mahanenko

  The Way of the Shaman

  Book#5

  Magic Dome Books

  The Karmadont Chess Set

  The Way of the Shaman, Book # 5

  Copyright © V. Mahanenko 2017

  Cover Art © V. Manyukhin 2017

  English translation copyright © Boris Smirnov 2017

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

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  ALSO BY VASILY MAHANENKO:

  The Way of the Shaman LitRPG Series:

  Survival Quest (The Way of the Shaman: Book #1)

  The Kartoss Gambit (The Way of the Shaman: Book #2)

  The Secret of the Dark Forest (The Way of the Shaman: Book #3)

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

  Dark Paladin LitRPG Series:

  The Beginning (Dark Paladin Book #1)

  Galactogon LitRPG Series:

  Start The Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One. Altameda

  Chapter Two. Shamanism is a Vocation

  Chapter Three. The Skrooj Dungeon

  Chapter Four. Return to Farstead

  Chapter Five. The Gray Death

  Chapter Six. The Dragons Chronicle

  Chapter Seven. The Outskirts of Carnue

  Chapter Eight. Return to Narlak

  Chapter Nine. The Pirates

  Chapter Ten. The Secondary Power

  Chapter Eleven. The Squidolphin

  Chapter Twelve. The Battle and its Aftermath

  Chapter One. Altameda

  Please assign a new location for the castle…

  AS SOON AS I took my seat on my throne, a fairly elaborate castle management interface popped up before me. The first thing that caught my eye was the damage percentage. At the moment Altameda was at 88% of its nominal Durability and needed repairs—but I was in for a shock when I checked the list of required materials. The castle’s repairs called for tens of thousands of stacks of Imperial granite, oak and steel. And that was just for ‘preliminary’—i.e. cosmetic—repairs. According to the system, I’d need to bring in an Architect of at least Level 350 to get a more accurate list of resources.

  Harsh…

  I could roughly gauge the cost of the Imperial materials and knew that I simply hadn’t the right to withdraw seventy million gold from the clan coffers to repair this place. Naturally, I’d call some Carpenters to repair the castle gates, which were below 50%. But everything else, including the walls, the buildings and the interiors would have to wait—as in, about another three hundred years or so…

  The castle’s personnel was managed in a separate tab of the interface. There were positions available for various stewards, guards, butlers and servants. Craftsmen and gatherers were not included here. Considering that a Level 24 castle required servants of all but Imperial level, the majordomo alone would cost my clan two million gold per year. A cheaper steward wouldn’t be able to cope with the amount of work the position entailed. It was the same with the castle guard—ordinary guards wouldn’t be able to keep the castle secure. I’d need advanced, Level 300 Warriors and Mages, as well as a Level 350 chief of security. I took another glance at the tab and couldn’t help but curse under my breath. Even a skeleton crew of NPC guards would cost my clan 27 million gold a year.

  The next tab in the castle management screen brought me some relief—there was at least one thing that didn’t require immense investment—the castle’s passive defense systems. It turned out that the castle had a moat which, when activated, would appear around the castle for several days. The magic that had repelled Geyra and her warriors from the walls was a property of the castle itself and not of its level. It was also maxed out so no one would be able to sneak into my place by stealth. The same thing held true for the overflight protection—no one could fly over or into Altameda’s airspace. This included players, NPCs and even mobs like the Rukh birds that Anastaria had told me about. In this sense, Altameda was impenetrable.

  The next tab detailed what needed to happen before the castle reached Level 25. I took a glance at the requirements and immediately moved onto the next tab. To level up, I’d need to improve the castle’s Spartan interiors—install statues, fountains, paintings, glass, chandeliers…I’d have to make a maddening amount of various improvements to the place that would all amount to tens of millions gold in materials alone, not to mention the labor costs. And anyway, where would I find the craftsmen to do all this?

  Wait just a second…

  Closing the management interfa
ce, I opened my mailbox and jotted down a letter. Beside me, Anastaria and Plinto looked on in surprise. If I remembered correctly, Sakas and Alt were going to be released from Pryke Mine fairly soon. Being released on parole isn’t very entertaining, I know from my own experience—so I sent them an offer to join my clan. A Carpenter and Painter of my own would come in handy. The Pryke Mine governor hadn’t praised them for nothing.

  “Mahan, is it normal for the walls to be shaking?” Plinto asked in an utterly neutral tone of voice. It was as if the shaking didn’t bother him or anything, but still, the Rogue had decided that perhaps he wouldn’t like to be buried alive in this place after all.

  “I’m still getting a handle on how to manage the castle and I haven’t gotten to the teleportation function yet, so we’re merely in a holding pattern, getting ready to teleport,” I reassured the Vampire.

  “Teleportation function?” Anastaria instantly perked up upon hearing two words that didn’t normally appear together: ‘castle’ and ‘teleportation.’

  “Uh-huh. Our castle can teleport to a new location every three months—either automatically or if we tell it to. What, did you not receive the notification? I thought we’re all equal owners…”

  “We may be equal, but some are more equal than others,” Stacey smiled. “I didn’t get anything like that at all. If you choose a new location, don’t even think of placing us anywhere near a large city. It may be prestigious to have a castle near a large settlement, but it’s very dangerous too.”

  “Dangerous?” It was my turn to nitpick at words.

  “Treasure hunters, thieves, robbers, raids by clans who want to level up at our expense…There’s a variety of things players could do with a castle that sits there in plain view, making their mouths water. Especially if it belongs to someone who’s caused you to respawn twice before—in the Dark Forest and with the Armageddon spell. As a result, I recommend you place it somewhere close to the Free Lands. We’ll buy a static portal, install it in the castle and live the good life quietly and to ourselves.”

  “There’s already a portal here. It’s simply not activated,” I replied, checking the castle’s properties. “But yeah, I agree—we’ve got no business near Anhurs. Any suggestions for where we should go?”

  “What about here?” Stacey opened her map, zoomed in and poked her finger at Lestran Province. “We have Exalted Status with them after Krispa, Kartoss is on the other side of the mountains, the Free Lands are nearby and so is Sintana, the Dwarven capital. And since we’ll be near the mountains, we might stumble across some mines.”

  “But you said yourself that we should stay away from large settlements…”

  “We won’t be that close,” replied Stacey, zooming in one more time and bending over the map. “Sintana is here. We can teleport to this site here, on the other side of this mountain range that branches off from Elma. Players don’t enjoy climbing mountains very much, so there won’t be many people wandering around. And whoever actually wants to find us will do so anyway. Check it out—the castle doesn’t have a moat surrounding it, so if we site it here on the shore…”

  “There is a moat too, it just hasn’t been activated,” I interrupted Stacey. “In fact, this castle has basically everything we could need—it’s just not activated at the moment.”

  “Hmm…” Anastaria took a moment to think things over and then confidently pointed at a spot on the map. “In that case—here. It’s a perfect location for harvesting timber, mining ore and developing agriculture.”

  “All right. I’ll try to teleport us over there,” I agreed with the girl and returned to the castle management interface. I hadn’t bothered to glance at the tab for the castle storehouses yet. It wasn’t likely that someone had hidden something in Altameda…Hold up!

  “Magdey, Clutzer—emergency meeting!” I called my Raid Leaders with the amulet. “I need your people here ASAP! You have two minutes to cast a portal to the following coordinates…”

  Your castle is being attacked. Attackers: Narlak City guard and the following Free Citizens: Undigit, Donotpunnik…

  I’d have to adjust my notification settings because the list of players who had decided to find out what had happened to the phantoms filled my entire screen. I swatted it aside like some annoying fly and turned to the Rogue:

  “Plinto—get over to the gates and try to take them on one at a time.”

  “Ahem…” the Rogue cleared his throat and asked wryly: “Did you forget that we don’t have any of our class abilities until we speak to our teachers? It’s not even clear whether we’ll get them back after we do talk to them. And you want me to go fight someone right now? If I show up as a mere Vampire, they’ll wipe the floor with me in a second. And, remember, there won’t be anyone to heal me—Stacey is in the same boat. In other words, sorry to use your favorite quip against you but—as if!”

  “I’m going to trademark that,” I muttered, “and then you’ll have to pay me royalties whenever you want to be funny at my expense.”

  And yet, Plinto was absolutely right. I really had forgotten that we’d lost our class abilities. I still had to go talk to Prontho…

  “What do you need Magdey and Clutzer for? Do you really think they can keep the attackers at bay?” asked Anastaria, apparently unclear about my plan.

  “Among other things. Our storehouses are entirely empty…”

  “If they tear down the gates, we won’t even have empty ones.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you another hint. Where exactly is Altameda located right now? Rather, on top of what..?”

  “That’s a dumb question. We…” Stacey first furrowed her brow and suddenly broke into a smirk. “Plinto! What are you standing around for? The enemy is at the gates and Glarnis lies untouched beneath our feet! On your mark, get set and pillage all the things! We’re taking anything that isn’t nailed down! And anything that is nailed down—we’re taking it with the nails! Mahan, you’re a genius!”

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE YOU DOING?” Leite’s voice blared in my amulet when I withdrew fifteen million gold from the clan account—half of the castle guard’s annual salary. I only parted with this sum after a lot of heartache and after I’d read up on the guards’ capabilities. The phantoms could only fight outside of the castle gates, while my new boys could sit back comfortably on the battlements and rain death from above. They would effectively make us invulnerable to any raid. In addition to all this, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the XP the castle guard earned from killing players or NPCs went either to repair the castle or, if the castle was already at full Durability, to special crystals that could be used to repair it in the future.

  Achievement earned: ‘Castle under guard.’

  You have hired a sufficient number of warriors to defend the castle and have earned a 5% discount on the remaining annual salary.

  “I’m saving you money, you miser!” I shot back at our outraged accountant—and hung up. I wasn’t about to leave my castle defenseless and was prepared to spend good money on keeping it safe. Thirty million a year really was a terrifying amount. We’d only earned six million in clean profit since Leite had begun to manage our budget—and he was a financial genius. It follows that unless our clan gets some lucky break, we’ll all end up working simply to pay the guards! A fun little present the Emperor has made me with this Level 24 castle! It looked like an Imperial gift from afar, but it was turning out to be more akin to Imperial servitude…

  “Orders, boss?” said Rorg, my new head of security. Since Altameda was initially a Kartossian castle, its personnel appeared in the form of enormous, anthropomorphic bulls that resembled minotaurs—or ‘Taurons,’ as Anastaria whispered in astonishment. I gathered by her surprise that this wasn’t a very popular race in Barliona.

  “The castle needs to be defended. Your orders are to kill anything that threatens it, while doing your utmost to minimize our own losses. Loot is priority number two. I want you to transfer whatever the assailants drop to
the castle storehouses. On the double!”

  “You sound like a real commander!” quipped Plinto. “Halt! At ease! Left, left…left, right, left! You’re giving me the shivers here, Mahan!”

  I was about to send the Rogue packing when two portals flared open simultaneously in the middle of the hall and began to disgorge Magdey’s and Clutzer’s troops.

  “Hello, hello!” the Rogue nodded amicably to the newcomers.

  “Magdey, Clutzer—it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Plinto. He will show you where to go and what to do. Our main objective is to strip Glarnis of everything it has. We’re at Hatred status with Narlak anyway so there won’t be any negative consequences. We don’t have much time. The castle is being attacked by some players. They’re weak at the moment, but we can expect a larger assault in the near future. We need to make our escape before then.”

  “We’re going to abandon the castle?” Magdey asked surprised.

  “Nope. We’re bringing the castle with us,” I smiled upon seeing the puzzlement on my players’ faces. “Come on people—time is loot. Off you go to Glarnis!”

  Still pretty puzzled, the troops followed Plinto, while I returned to my throne and continued to study my castle’s abilities. Ah! Here’s the tab for managing the phantoms…Initially I wanted to hang on to them, but the Dark Lord was a bit too adamant about setting them free, so—well, be free, my darlings! All is forgiven.