The Way of the Shaman [06] Shaman's Revenge Read online

  Dear Game Administrators,

  Just now, at (), I had the pleasure of speaking with an NPC playing the role of Goddess Eluna who told me something very interesting. I was informed that…

  Please explain the principles underpinning the Tear, the reasons for its appearance and how this item might affect my character.

  Once my email received the ‘Received for processing’ status, I called for my goblin:

  “Viltrius!”

  “Yes, Master!” The castle’s majordomo appeared beside me in a flash. I don’t know what algorithms had been activated but currently this little green goblin was standing before me as straight as a nail, as if he was trying to show me how courageous he was. And this is supposed to be the majordomo of a Level 25 castle?

  “Tell me what needs to be done to ensure that you have full powers over this castle. So that we don’t receive any uninvited guests. I want you to immediately whitelist Kornik, Prontho and Fleita. Those three are allowed to visit Altameda. But the others, just like that Archdemon who showed up to litigate for our portal demon, must only have access to the castle if you grant it to them. I’m listening!”

  “In order for me to have full control of the castle, the castle must contain at least three hobgoblins (though five is ideal), each of which shall have his own territory to guard. Only these creatures can block visitors from entering their territories, be they Harbinger or deity. However…”

  As Viltrius was speaking, I was already digging around the castle’s settings, looking for the hobgoblins section. If I had to hire several NPCs to ensure my safety, then…What the hell is this?!

  “However, this cannot be done at the moment,” Viltrius continued in a guilty tone of voice. “Your spouse stored four alganides in the castle—and hobgoblins are allergic to this mineral and refuse to enter a castle that contains it.”

  The button for hiring the hobgoblins, which were medium-sized furry creatures of indeterminate gender dressed in red shirts, was grayed-out. Even despite the annual cost of a hundred thousand for each hobgoblin, I was ready to hire five, but the system wouldn’t let me do that…

  “What is algana-what-cha-ma-call-it?” I asked the goblin.

  “Alganide is a mineral mined deep in the Elma Mountains. It is used in Alchemy. It is very toxic and it emits a specific odor that hobgoblins can’t stand.”

  “And this mineral is somewhere in the castle? Or in the storehouses?”

  “In the castle. It is in Anastaria’s personal chamber. She brought a chest there, placed it in the center of the room and forbade me from touching it. It is that chest that contains the alganide…”

  “I see. Well, let’s go take a look at this chest then,” I offered, getting up from my beloved rocking chair.

  “Master,” Viltrius squeaked once again, looking at me guiltily. “That’s not possible.”

  “What do you mean it’s not possible?” I sat back down from surprise. “You have unrestricted access to the entire castle. I own this place, remember? What could be off limits to us in Altameda?”

  “The private chamber of Mistress Anastaria as well as Master Plinto—these are both areas that you may not enter without their permission. Such are the rules of tripartite ownership.”

  “WHAT?! Where does it say that? Who came up with these rules? I am the rightful owner of Altameda and only I can decide who can and who cannot enter its rooms! Show me!”

  The Goblin was getting ready to squeak something about the need to respect property rights, but I wasn’t listening to him anymore. Anastaria and Plinto have personal chambers that I can’t enter? Like hell! Shut everything down. Tear the rooms out by their roots and toss them over the castle walls. This is my territory!

  “I forbid you from touching that chest!” No sooner had I burst into the room than a thought from Anastaria burst into my head. The good thing was that my rage at the thought that the girl still had something of hers in my castle and, moreover, that I couldn’t touch this thing was so immense that I didn’t even consider how I should respond to her. Earlier, back in reality, I wanted to just ignore her, then blow her off, then yell at her, then ignore her again and, finally, choosing none of the above, I had entered Barliona hoping to figure it out when it came up—and yet now I didn’t feel like reflecting at all. What’s the difference how I spoke with Anastaria if it was her fault that I couldn’t hire the hobgoblins I needed?

  “Oh and welcome back, by the way,” the girl added.

  “No way, this castle is mine! You can take all your junk with you!”

  “You’re mistaken, my dear, that castle is OURS. I am just as much its owner as you or Plinto. So get out of my room and forget it even exists. I won’t allow you to bar me from Altameda.”

  “What’s going on here?” I exclaimed as my hands passed through the chest like it didn’t even exist. Smack dab in the middle of a small room with one window—furnished with nothing but a simple bed and a rug—stood a locked chest which was inaccessible to me. What was more was that Anastaria had been automatically warned when I broke into her room! That means there’s some alarm here, notifying her of any intruders.

  “Viltrius!”

  “Yes, Master,” said the goblin, pressing his ears to his head. I guess I seem pretty terrifying right now, if my poor majordomo is this scared of me.

  “How did Anastaria find out that I entered her room?” I asked, trying to calm my nerves and speak normally. It wasn’t the NPC’s fault that Anastaria had thought of installing this thing on the lock, so I couldn’t blame my servant.

  “The properties of a personal chamber are basically no different than that of a Bank of Barliona. As the owner, you may enter, but you can’t do anything else without permission from the room’s owner.”

  “How can I strike Anastaria and Plinto from the list of owners?”

  “We can’t. Even the Emperor cannot do this. Although…”

  “What?”

  “You can buy out their shares of ownership. If they sell them to you officially, you’ll become the sole owner of Altameda.”

  “What do you mean their shares?” I asked, stunned. “Altameda belongs to me!”

  “That’s not entirely accurate,” Viltrius corrected me. “The Emperor did grant you exclusive ownership; however, as soon as you married Anastaria, under the laws of the Aristocracy, 10% of your property passed to Anastaria. You are the rightful owner of the castle and can decide where it teleports to, but Anastaria may also do whatever she wants with her territory. Aside from selling it to another sentient. The same goes for Plinto. Your blood brother also owns 10% of the castle’s territory and if he showed up at the castle’s gates, I could not bar him from entering. They’re both owners too! Accordingly, if you wish to take full ownership of the castle, you must buy out the shares of the other owners. This is stated in the Code as well.”

  Well I’ll be! In order to complete a quest, I gifted Anastaria and Plinto 10% of the castle. Opening the castle’s properties, I launched the calculation for assessing the castle’s value and couldn’t help but whistle to myself when it was complete—if it were built from scratch, Altameda would have cost me 450 million gold! In my fit of largess, I had given 90 million worth of equity to two players, one of whom had been using me all along! I suppose I need to have a careful chat with the other too…What the hell is going on?!

  STOP!

  Take a deep breath and activate that part of the body that’s responsible for reason. In humans that’s typically the brain. In actual fact my largess and my lovely existence on this planet isn’t what’s at stake here. That’s a mere consequence. What should be much more interesting is the cause of all these events—what scared the Corporation so much that it decided to gift an ordinary prisoner like me a castle worth 450 million gold? It’s almost as surprising why this question hadn’t occurred to me since I got the castle. Did the Corporation people really fail to consider that I might sell the castle, even if only piecemeal, pay for my release a
nd transfer all the money out to reality? Missteps like this don’t just happen on their own! This isn’t some fairy tale! In which case, the question is why?

  Actually, ‘why’ seems to be the word of the day.

  “Viltrius, could you explain to me how the clan has so many members?” I asked the goblin, after blinking back into the main hall. In addition to the standard coordinates input field, the Blink spell also came with another interesting feature: It allowed me to select a specific point on a 3D model of the area around me, with a radius of several kilometers, to teleport to. Furthermore, this interface scaled very smoothly and was a cinch to navigate, and therefore also gave me the chance to study Altameda from ‘within.’ Seeing yet another notification in the clan chat, I remembered my surprise from the huge number of people who’d suddenly appeared in the castle and therefore decided to put aside the issue of the castle’s ownership and Anastaria’s room and ask Viltrius some questions.

  “I don’t know, Master. When Plinto became the clan deputy, he began to recruit Free Citizens…”

  “Hold up. How did Plinto become deputy?”

  “Well, he’s not technically the deputy. He’s more of an acting deputy,” Viltrius began to explain. “According the Charter of the Legends of Barliona, which Clutzer and Anastaria drew up, the clan cannot exist more than three days without a deputy, a treasurer and a Raid Leader. When Barsina, Leite and Magdey left the Legends of Barliona and when you failed to transfer their duties to yourself, the issue of disbanding the clan came up. That’s in the Charter too. So a general meeting was held and the meeting decided to make Plinto the acting deputy. Clutzer became the Raid Leader and Uruk became the treasurer.”

  “Who the hell is Uruk?”

  “One of the Free Citizens who used to work for Leite in the auctions department.”

  “I see…” I shook my head with displeasure, opened the Charter and read it carefully, focusing on the clauses that the goblin had mentioned. Yeeeah…You really do have to trust people a lot to allow something like this to happen. The Clan Charter, which we rewrote after the clan changed its name—or more precisely which Clutzer and Anastaria rewrote—really did contain several clauses about filling required positions. Why does everything have to be so crappy?!

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” I told Viltrius, opened my map, looked up the Anhurs coordinates and blinked to the capital. It was time to visit the guild registrar and take complete control of the clan. I can’t have random players named Uruk managing my clan’s treasury.

  “Mahan, Hello!” I had barely assumed the duties of Raid Leader when Clutzer called me.

  “Hi,” I replied dryly, not yet sure how I should talk to this person. Clutzer was one of the ones who plotted against me with Phoenix, so it’d be foolish on his part to imagine that I’d meet him with open arms. In fact, he’s probably better off watching his jaw in case my fist found it.

  “I saw you returned to the game but didn’t want to bother you immediately. However, since you’re adjusting the clan duties, you must have time. Can you spare me several minutes? I’m at the Golden Horseshoe. Can we chat?”

  “Let’s chat,” I replied. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  There was no point in avoiding my problems: They need to be solved right away or not solved at all. In all honesty, there’s nothing for me to discuss with the Rogue—everything he had to tell me, he’d already said to me back there on the plateau in front of the Creator’s Tomb. So the most precise move was to kick him out of the clan—and yet something kept me from going through with this. I wanted to look him in the eyes, even if they were just the eyes of his avatar. I wanted to look at him and ask, ‘Why’d you do it?’ Mulling things over a bit, I reached for my amulet and made a call. I really didn’t want to go to the meeting on my own, since I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t attack Clutzer with my fists—I still had a week-and a half before the happy moment when I’d get my Spirits back.

  “Yo…” came Plinto’s voice. “Whatcha want?”

  “Hi, Plinto. This is Mahan. I’ll be waiting for you at the entrance of the Golden Horseshoe in two minutes.”

  “Uh…you want me to come downstairs and show you to our table?” the Rogue countered sarcastically. “We’ve been waiting for you two hours already. Why don’t you get a move on?”

  “We?”

  “Oh gawd, why is everything so difficult with you? Do I really need to come down, or will you come up on your own?”

  “All right, all right. Relax. I’ll be up in a second.”

  I hung up the amulet and hummed to myself. So they were already waiting for me. Clutzer really deserves his fame as an analyst—he understands perfectly well that, one on one, our meeting won’t go very well. So he invited Plinto. Hmm once again…But really, what a pair those two are! No doubt they had set up an alarm to notify them when I reentered the game and all this time they were just giving me the space to do what I needed. And it’s only when I turned my attention to the clan that they decided to talk. Well, if it was time then it was time. I’m always ready to talk.

  “Are you still here, Dan?” Stacey’s thought suddenly popped into my head, forcing me to stop and clench my fist. What the hell was it now? My first interaction with Anastaria had occurred under emotionally trying circumstances, so I hadn’t really felt anything except anger. Now, however, a wave of unvarnished hate all but flooded me from head to toe. If she showed up beside me—I’d kill her!

  “I’m still here, kitten,” I replied as softly as possible. I couldn’t allow myself to show Stacey my anger, hate or desire to strangle her. She didn’t deserve to know my true feelings. And who cares what she’ll think about me talking to her like this. From now on, this is the only way I’ll speak with her.

  “Oh my darling, it’s so lovely to speak with you again!” Anastaria immediately caught on. “Listen—how are the Legends doing? I heard that my little Clutzer’s been recruiting people left and right, is that true? Have you all decided to rebuild the ruins?”

  “You know, the Legends are doing just fine, thanks to your assistance. As for the ruins, when are you going to give that Chess Set back to me kitten? The Eye too—I wouldn’t mind seeing that again.”

  “What Chess Set, love? I don’t believe I recall what you’re talking about.”

  “No matter! When we meet, I’ll make sure to remind you.” I avoided hanging up by some miracle. That bitch is having her fun too! “What about you? How are you?”

  “Not bad, not bad. Listen, what am I even talking about—we should meet up tomorrow! I’ve filed for divorce and you have to attend the ceremony. So a Herald will come for you tomorrow. I just wanted to warn you in advance. Who knows, maybe you’ll be busy or something…It’s scheduled for two o’clock server time. Anyway, that’s it. Talk to you later! Kisses, my beloved Shaman.”

  “Excellent, wonderful, until tomorrow,” I grunted. There’s weren’t any more messages from Anastaria, yet my mind had turned into an enormous hippodrome around which my thoughts raced like horses.

  Until this conversation, I really had planned on breaking all ties with Anastaria so that there wouldn’t be anything that bound me to her, but now that she broached the topic herself, I wanted to hold on to our marriage with everything I had. That damn premonition of mine, suddenly awaking for the first time in several days, began to scream that under no condition could I become a divorced Earl. I’ll have to dig through all the relevant laws of Barliona to figure out before tomorrow’s meeting what will happen in the event of a divorce, in the event of refusing the divorce and in the event of even showing up to begin with…It wasn’t for nothing that back in Narlak, I’d received the A Noble & Healthy Lifestyle Companion—a tome expounding all the laws and regulations of being a member of the aristocracy. Even if it was two thousand pages long, I should have time to figure out the important items. What if during the divorce proceedings, half of my property, including Altameda, would be given to Anastaria? Did I need that? No! So I’ll
chat with Clutzer and Plinto right now and then go back to Altameda. I’ll abandon all the chores I’ve begun and focus on reading that book—and I won’t leave the game until I figure out what I am entitled to as an Earl and what my duties are. I don’t have much time—tomorrow and two days. And I’m not about to duck the meeting either—the time had come for me to change from a player who runs around a lot to a player who reads and makes his decisions objectively and judiciously.

  “Please come in. You are expected,” said the host, helpfully opening the front door and inviting me into the Golden Horseshoe. Once upon a time the tavern’s owner used to stand here, but over the years he ceased to greet his guests personally and simply hired a player to do it. Despite the fact that it would be much cheaper for him to employ an NPC for the job, the goblin owner rejected this option: According to him, NPCs would never work in the Golden Horseshoes. Full stop!

  “Would you like to order now or would you like to see the menu?” the server asked politely. Clutzer, Plinto and Eric waited silently while I made my decision. I managed to notice that they hadn’t spent the last week sitting by idly—Clutzer was sparkling at Level 204, Eric was now a Master of Malabar, and Plinto boasted the red badge of a PK-er. All three remained silent as I sat down at the table, waiting for me to begin—but I too stayed silent. I nodded each one a greeting and turned to the server.

  “Dish du jour and a Tartarus ale.”

  Having taken my order, the server left, leaving me on my own with my three former companions. Why do I say former? Because in this world, my only remaining companion was Draco. Everyone else is an acquaintance. That’s enough for me.

  “I suggest we don’t beat around the bush,” I began, sitting down, “and get to the topic at hand immediately. First of all, a question—did all three of you know what would happen on the plateau?”

  “No, only I did,” replied Clutzer. “I was the only one who participated in designing the plan. The others weren’t in the know. They are prepared to swear an oath to the Emperor about this.”