The Kartoss Gambit (The Way of the Shaman: Book #2) (10 page)

Quest available: 'Search for the Dark Coordinator'

Description: The Dark Empire of Kartoss has been actively sending its squads into the Krong province. It is believed that the activity of the ten Kartoss squads is being coordinated by one sentient. Find him. Time given for completing the quest — 60 days. Quest type: Unique. Reward: +4000 to Reputation with the Malabar Empire, +4000 Experience, +10000 Gold coins, a Scaling item from the Emperor's stores. Penalty for failing the quest: +40 to Reputation with the Malabar Empire, +400 Experience, +100 Silver.

“I will find out who is coordinating the activity of the squads” I almost stuttered as I accepted the quest. Could a simple goblin trigger the system to give me a unique quest? I can understand it with the Eye – the chance of such an item dropping during the first completion of a Dungeon is very high. Barliona is extremely vast, so quests like that drop quite often. A clan like Phoenix completes them fairly regularly. I’m certain of that. However, getting a unique quest from a Mayor is just nonsense! Could my stars have simply aligned in such a lucky way?

"Excellent. Then until we meet again. When you find out the identity of the squad coordinator just say: 'Summoning a Herald. I require assistance." One of them would turn up right away. Now, if you please excuse me, I have business to attend to. The guard will show you out."

I left the administration building feeling dazed. That was some stroke of luck! To get a quest that gives bonuses even if you fail it is a dream for any would-be slacker. Right. I need to calm down or get all these emotions under control. What do I have to do in Farstead? Why did I come here in the first place? I have to find out if there is a Shaman trainer here. I need to drop by a Cartographer and buy maps of Malabar and the town. I also need to find profession trainers, buy a scroll of teleportation to Beatwick and to the town. Should I buy a portal scroll to Anhurs too, perhaps? If it's less than two thousand gold, I'll get it for sure.

But first — to the Bank.

"How can I be of service?" the drawling and somewhat squeaky voice belonged to a small gremlin, dressed in a chequered suit and sporting two enormous goblin-like ears.

"I would like to access my account and withdraw items belonging to Mahan the Hunter."

"Identification was successful. The items of Mahan the Hunter are in your personal room and you may withdraw them," the gremlin said a few seconds later. "Regarding accessing your account, we would like to offer you a new system for the storage of cash funds. Now as soon as you get the money, it could go to your account immediately, bypassing the need to visit the Bank. Any needed amount, limited only by the size of your deposit, would always be in your purse. The cost of the service is two thousand gold a year and also five percent of the total of any transaction with the account. Would you like to sign up for our new offer?"

Wow! A new banking feature in Barliona! The idea of introducing such a deposit was quite ingenious, since now PK-players would only be able to get their hands on Legendary Items, with money remaining out of their reach. But two grand a year and five percent from each transaction, on top of the minus thirty percent from the red headband... This is just way too much money for me. But then again, it would mean greater security...

"All right, sign me up," ignoring my inner Greed Toad, which was protesting vigorously and stomping around my head with a sign 'We want our money back!', I decided to set up the new account. Keeping my money safe was a number one priority, as I had little desire to inadvertently enrich random robbers.

"It's done," the gremlin handed me a new purse, which immediately found its place on my belt. "Your current funds on account amount to sixteen thousand and forty five gold, thirty two silver and forty five copper coins. You have been given the purse for this account. There are also two invitations in your name, here they are," the gremlin gave me two golden coupons: my four hundred thousand of potential gold pieces. All that remained was to find a buyer and it's in the bag. "Is there anything else you want?" seeing me shake my head, the gremlin went on: "thank you for using the Bank of Barliona. Your personal room awaits you," he pointed towards an open door.

A personal room in the Bank... It's a bit of a joke really. There's a table, a chair (not even a chair, a stool) and an empty cupboard for items and all of this was contained in three square meters. There was barely any place to turn. I took out the Orc Warrior figurines and arranged them on the table. What was so valuable about them? They looked like ordinary green chess pieces. And yet people were prepared to pay crazy money for them and offer sky-high positions. This was crazy. I took one of the orc figurines and looked at its properties. What did we have?

"Grichin the Unbreakable. Around three thousand years ago the orc tribes..."

I already knew this text. The head of the Pryke mine told me the story when he examined the figurines. The description text could not fit on one virtual page, so I scrolled it down, right to the end. Ah! What's this?

a
2
+b
2
=c
2

An ordinary and uncomplicated line of characters. No explanations. Nothing. Just a quadratic equation. But why on earth was it there? I started to go through each figurine in turn.

||x||=√x1
2
+x2
2
+...+xn
2

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21….

Seven digits after the dot

*

*

=

[Value entry field]

Entry field. As soon as I pressed it a virtual keyboard appeared in front of me, for typing in the needed value. I entered an empty line. Nothing happened. I put in each sign from the figurines separately. There was no result. I then spent almost an hour on entering different combinations. Zero. Judging by the text, you had to work out some value with precision of seven digits after the dot, but I saw no logic at all in these lines.

Having spent all that time on attempts to come up with a value, starting from an empty line and ending with typing in random numbers, I gave up. There was no result. Damn, this is really messing with my head! That's it! I need a break. I would walk around, drop by the merchants, visit the Cartographer and chill out a bit. Perhaps some clever thought would hit me after that. One thing was clear — I would not be leaving the figurines in the Bank. What if I get a sudden insight into how to solve this puzzle and the figurines would be far away in the Bank. I think not. I put the Hunter's items and the chess pieces in my bag and left the Bank. What could those signs mean?

"Good sirs, is there a Shaman trainer and a Cartographer in your town?" I asked for directions from the first patrol that I came across, as they were cruising the town streets at a steady pace. Even despite my red band, which would produce a negative reaction with the NPCs, the guards were obliged to answer the questions asked of them.

"We do have a Cartographer. To get to him you need to walk to the end of the street, until that overturned cart, then turn right and then keep going straight until a fountain with a unicorn. From the fountain you turn left and three houses later on the right you will see a sign with a map. That's where the cartographer lives," said the guard. His chesty yet quiet voice strongly reminded me of the orc from the mine, which brought to my memory the desire to find out why he was sent to Pryke and stripped of the title of a trainer. "We don't have any Shaman trainers, just one former one by the name of Almis. If you want to learn something about Shamans, you can go to him. Almis lives right by the town wall. To find him you need to go straight..." the guard started to give me a rather complicated set of directions to Almis, so I caught only half of what he was saying. First I needed to buy a map of the town that would show me where I was and then simply ask a guard to point out the location, mark it and systematically make my way there.

"Any more questions?"

"No, thank you. You were of great help."

"We serve the Emperor!" barked the guards and unhurriedly continued on their beat.

"Dearie, can you help out a weak helpless woman?" I almost got as far as the Cartographer when an old lady standing in a house entrance called me over. She was leaning on a walking stick and holding a sealed envelope, which she was stretching towards me. A delivery quest! At last I'm becoming an ordinary player, who is being asked to do various assignments! And where you get assignments, you get Experience, reputation and money. Of course I will help the elderly woman, the Cartographer and Almis aren't going anywhere.

"I'm at your service, dear lady. What was it that you wanted?"

"I wanted to send a letter to my friend Mabel. Both of us have become too old to walk over for a chat, so we've decided to send each other letters. Would you deliver it? It isn't far, just around the corner. It's a house painted with a flower pattern," she waved her hand assumingly towards the said house.

"Of course I'll do it, give me the letter and I'll deliver it in no time."

"I'll be honest with you, my good lad, I have no money, so I can't pay you anything for your good deed. I can only put in a good word for you later."

"Who cares about the money if it's that close," I said cheerfully, though inside I was very disappointed. Just my luck to come across a free quest, of which there are plenty in Barliona. Such quests are aimed at socialization of the players when they have nothing better to do. Just a few grains of Experience, no money or reputation. Few people waste their time on them. Fine, if I said I’d do it, backing out of it wouldn't look nice. There wouldn't be any consequences, of course, but I would feel bad about ditching the old lady, even if she was an NPC.

Quest accepted: 'Deliver a letter'.

Description: Deliver a letter to Mabel, who lives in a flower-painted house. Quest type: Common. Reward: 10 Experience. Penalty for not completing the quest: None.

I celebrated starting to get quests too soon. How could I forget about the socializers? And I got all excited about raking in all that cash and Experience. Yeah, right, I in my dreams. Mabel turned out to be a wrinkled old woman, leaning on a stick, just like the one that sent me. It was as if they were sisters — they even resembled each other somewhat. Probably the developers didn't want to spend too much time on their appearance and used the same template, sticking them into different houses and forgetting all about them. This isn't the capital, where each NPC is thought-through to the extent of being able to tell the history of their ancestors several generations back at the drop of a hat. Here on the periphery, where there aren't that many players, they didn't have to bother all that hard.

"Oh, thank you sonny, I've given up hope of getting a letter from Patricia. Before we used to write to each other every day, but these days few people want to help us out. Everyone wants to see some cash for the help, but help is best given freely, is it not? No-one's really mindful of old age..."

Quest 'Deliver a letter' completed. Reward: 10 Experience, points remaining until next level: 1091 Experience.

I nodded in a resigned fashion, giving little heed to Mabel's moral instruction. A socializer quest, not much you can do with it. Aside from getting no money out of it, you're bound to have to listen to moral stories about the injustice of the world. The old woman finally fell silent, I turned around and tried to quietly disappear, but that was all wishful thinking.

"Dearie, can you help out a weak helpless woman? I jotted down a note for Patricia here, but have no-one except you to deliver it. Would you do a kindness for Granny?" Mabel, was ready to hand me a sealed envelope. When on earth did she have the time? All she seemed to be doing was stand there giving me a lecture, but now had an envelope ready all of a sudden. "I'll be honest with you, my good lad, I have no money, so I can't pay you anything for your good deed. I can only put in a good word for you later." This one's at it too — ‘No money, can't pay, but you must do the work well and without a complaint and we'll just put in a good word for you.’

"Of course, dear lady. I will deliver your letter to Patricia, don't you worry. Good day to you."

Quest accepted: 'Deliver a letter'.

Description: Deliver a letter to Patricia, who lives in a brown house. Quest type: Common. Reward: 10 Experience. Penalty for not completing the quest: None.

Patricia stood in the door of her house, as if awaiting my return.

"So, is Mabel still with us?"

"She's alive and well and is sending a letter back to you, here you go," I said, handing the old lady the envelope.

"That's good to know. We're living in troubled times, you see. Everyone's out to wrong old and frail people, they threaten to..." this one also hopped on the moral lecture train. I really do have a good deal of respect for old people. Before I ended up in Barliona, I often visited my old parents and would usually give up my seat to an older person in public transport. However, hearing moralistic lectures several times a day, especially from NPCs in a Game — was too much.