Shaman's Call- Spirit Song: A Litrpg Adventure, page 1
Shaman’s Call - Spirit Song
License Notes: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Shaman’s Call - Spirit Song
Copyright © 2022
Sean Oswald
Cover art copyright
Sean Oswald
Contents
Prologue - Damage Control
Chapter 1- Homesick?
Chapter 2- Annoyance
Chapter 3- Bullet Tank
Chapter 4- The Depths
Chapter 5- Impulses
Chapter 6- Donkey Kong
Chapter 7- Joust
Chapter 8- Racing
Chapter 9- Gauntlet
Chapter 10- NPC?
Interlude 1- Wresting Control
Chapter 11- New Companions
Chapter 12- No Place Like Home
Chapter 13- Ogre Whoopie Drive
Chapter 14- Team Tension
Chapter 15- A Stroll by Moonlight
Chapter 16- Less Talking, More Doing
Chapter 17- Increased Loot Drops?
Chapter 18- Reunion
Chapter 19- Revelations
Chapter 20- Hunting
Chapter 21- Ring of Fire
Chapter 22- Ravenous
Chapter 23- Go Boom
Chapter 24- The Blood of an Englishman
Chapter 25- Through a Glass Darkly
Chapter 26- Expanding the Village
Chapter 27- Progression
Chapter 28- Ticking Crocodiles
Epilogue- Behind the Curtain
Prologue - Damage Control
Tom was lost in thought. He had been gaming a great deal lately. In fact, it had almost taken over his life. At least that was what his wife, Karen said. Wife was sort of generous. When she had learned she couldn’t have children, something had broken in her. Now, they were two people who lived in the same apartment.
It was a small apartment, but not nearly so tiny as most of the population’s. Tom was fortunate enough to have a job, and not just as a glorified button pusher to meet a legislative quota for human involvement in an industry. At least, he didn’t like to think of himself like that. He worked for Quantum Games. Well, that was the subsidiary that he worked for. The actual structure of multi-national corporations was a complicated mess.
He was proud of the products they made. Humanity’s role in the world had changed, but at least Quantum Games gave people a way to enjoy their lives. Tom’s job was in marketing. It was important to keep up favorable impressions about their products, especially their new flagship, Legends of Selmia.
Oh, the AIs did most of the work. They designed campaigns to promote the game. Crunched the numbers for what would be the most productive ways to connect with prospective users. Still, there was something missing from the AI. ‘The human element,’ they called it, but Tom liked to think of it as the ‘gotcha factor.’
Not that Tom was a salesman. Far from it. He didn’t even like people that much, but he knew people. He could read them in a heartbeat, and not with any of that psychobabble stuff. No, Tom was a numbers guy. People lied, but numbers never did; and all of human behavior and preferences could be boiled down to numbers. It was just that it sometimes took a person to put it into perspective.
Thus, he worked in what was deemed a high-stress position now, and as such, he was afforded free access to Legends of Selmia as a perk. Sometimes after a grueling four-hour day he would just need to plug into his pod and unwind. Lately, it had been even more fun than before. Sure, he had to create a new avatar when the closed beta ended and the open beta started, but he didn’t mind too much. In fact, the game had taken on a great deal of life lately.
Now, he was on his way to the office. Public transportation was such a pain. Part of modern life was that there was little reason to be around people. Few people went out, and most either worked from home or didn’t work at all. That was life in a post-human society with AIs running everything. But those same AIs insisted that private vehicles were destructive to the world, and thus, public transportation was the only way to get anywhere. Fortunately, the system was much more comprehensive than hinted at in old holo-movies.
Still, people smelled funny and made weird sounds. Real life was nowhere near as sanitary as life in Legends of Selmia. That was really saying something, given his recent experiences. Thus, on the few occasions he was called into the office to work, he tried to zone out and ignore his fellow passengers. He would contemplate the upcoming meeting. AI had determined that sometimes human productivity and input were maximized when they worked in face-to-face collaborative efforts.
It was only the raised tone of voice that drew his attention. He looked over and saw a man standing up, waving his hands demonstratively. He was very worked up about whatever he was saying. “I swear. I saw it with my own eyes.”
A woman sitting in the tube across from him scoffed. “You are just watching too many conspiracy ‘casts.”
A young man a few feet away snorted at her words.
The standing man continued, “No. It was real. It had these long, black wings, and mottled, gray skin, with these weird black symbols on it.”
“Sure,” the young man replied. “Got your hands on too many stims, didn’t you?”
A mousy-looking woman several seats down said, “No, I think I saw something about it on the news holos.”
Tom tuned out the rest of the discussion. A number of bizarre events had been reported lately. First had been a rash of disappearances. That was the simplest of the stories to explain, but the one that affected him most personally. All the disappearances were tied to Legends of Selmia, so it had been a marketing nightmare. Quantum Games eventually got the story quashed, but that didn’t stop the weirdness.
Reports of holes in the air, black clouds of, well, something, and tales of winged monsters. It was all enough to drive the over-wrought imagination of a populace with a nearly unlimited number of ways to spend their time but little sense of purpose. Hopefully, this unscheduled meeting was unrelated, but Tom knew his luck wasn’t that good. He just wished that real life had a stat screen like Legends of Selmia.
Once he exited the tube, it was only a quick elevator ride up to the 113th floor. He’d never been this high up in the Quantum Games headquarters. That alone was enough to make him nervous. When he reached the reception desk, a robot looked at him. “Welcome, Mr. Meese. You are the last to arrive for today’s meeting. The other attendees are already waiting outside of conference room 4.”
“Okay, do I need any new authorizations for my badge?”
“Your employee badge has already been updated so that you could get off the elevator on this floor.” Then the robot extended an arm to direct Tom.
He followed a short hall until he reached a waiting area outside of a double door. There were half a dozen rather plush chairs. Two of them were occupied. The young woman drew his attention first. Tom knew her type. She was wearing professional attire but couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. Reasonably pretty, she dressed to minimize that and tried to project an air of experience. She was likely some type of genius, with double PhD’s before she was twenty, but lacking interpersonal skills.
Across from her was a handsome young man. Tom guessed he was in his mid- to late-twenties. The man didn’t even notice Tom’s arrival as he was so busy trying to chat the woman up. A side effect of the modern world was a lack of opportunity to interact with members of another sex, or even people at all, at least in a face-to-face manner. That didn’t mean that human biology had changed, though. Attraction was still a thing.
The woman was engaged in conversation but much more aware of her surroundings. Tom saw the moment her eyes narrowed as she noticed him. She waited for the young man to finish speaking before saying, “Robert, it looks like we aren’t alone any longer.”
Robert was startled but then looked over at Tom before quickly standing and extending his hand. Shaking was a bit outdated, but like all things, old customs or styles of dress would cycle around from time to time. Tom took an immediate liking to this guy. He just struck one as the straightforward type, and his grip was firm.
“Hello, I’m Robert DuPont.”
“Glad to meet you, Robert, I’m Tom Meese. Wait. Dupont? As in the DuPont’s?”
The man blushed slightly before nodding. “Yeah, that’s my family. I’m still just Robert.”
“I told you that everyone was gonna react like that. It isn’t often that we normal people get to meet the heir to one of the richest families in the world,” the woman said. There was something about her speech pattern that seemed familiar.
“One of the heirs,” Robert corrected.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just like to know all the variables. Still trying to figure out why I was called here today,” Tom said.
“It’s cool. I have a friend who says things like that. As to why we are here. I have no idea. My family
Tom looked at the guest badges both of them were wearing. Robert DuPont and Tara Williams. “You can tell from my badge that I’m a Quantum employee. But I don’t work in Operations. I’m just a number cruncher in Marketing.”
At that moment, the doors to conference room 4 opened. Out stepped an attorney. Well two of them, one human and one robot. It was pretty obvious which of them was colder. “There is no reason to be humble. Mr. Meese is a VP of Marketing. He is a bit of a genius at using numbers to extrapolate human response.”
Tara scoffed at that. The robot lawyer looked at his human counterpart and then at Tara. “I fail to comprehend what was funny about that statement.”
“You would. It’s simple. Humans can’t be boiled down to numbers,” Tara replied.
“And Ms. Williams here has a PhD in psychology,” the human attorney began before Tara cut him off.
“Ahem… double PhD’s in psychology and sociology.”
“Yes, yes, double PhD’s. Although you aren’t here for your academic pedigree. Now, if you will join us at the table, I fear that we have a long day ahead of us.”
“Wait; if she isn’t here as a psychologist, then why is she…” Tom’s voice trailed off. The numbers always made sense if you looked at them the right way. He turned towards Tara. “Tauri?”
Her eyes grew wide. “How’d you know…? Wait. Robert. I should have seen it. Elgar?”
The only one smiling at that point was Robert. “Wait. We got the crew together outside of the game. How cool is that?”
Chapter 1- Homesick?
I was ready to get back to Ghazban village. The very fact that such a thought entered my head was less a commentary on the village and more about how rude the human NPC’s could be. I wasn’t used to much social interaction, but what I did get was with gaming buddies. Now, I was stuck in a world where I had to interact just to get the basics of life. There were no AIs to place my food order before I even realized I was hungry, nor robots to deliver any goods to my apartment.
No. Now I was in the outside, as heavy-duty VR gamers often called it. To be fair, most of humanity were VR gamers now, so that wasn’t a testament to skill or anything. It was more about our options for distraction. The crazy thing was that, since I had been killed and trapped in the game, the outside was now part of the inside.
I stared down at the human merchant from whom I was trying to buy some eggs. Luckily, the butcher had been more accommodating, and getting bacon was easy enough. I wanted to try cooking with food I didn’t have to hunt for. Call it an experiment.
“For the final time, I don’t have any eggs,” the merchant said.
“What are you talking about. I can see some in the back right now.”
“Leave it to a brute to peek into the back of my store. Well, despite whatever you think you saw, I have no eggs. Or maybe I can make this clearer. I have no eggs to sell to you.”
There it was. I should have been expecting that. At least half the merchants I spoke with in Belchor had some type of problem with me. It had gotten a bit better after we left the capital, but now I was stuck in this little town halfway back to Ghazban. I had spent the evening resting and then waited for Elgar and the others to log back in.
After they were more than an hour late, I became impatient. I spent an hour trying to draw the black energy from the clawed hand into myself. Experience taught me I could only handle a little at a time. It made me feel sick to my stomach, which, given what ogres normally eat, was saying quite a bit. At least I managed to raise my trans-dimensional body to (B-5) this morning. I’d say I felt a bit stronger, but there were no changes on my character sheet, so it was hard to say.
After that, I decided to go and try my luck at some cooking, but I needed ingredients. I didn’t want to leave the town, since I assumed my teammates were all just delayed. It was odd that all three of them were delayed at the same time, but so far, I didn’t have any reason to distrust them. Gregor was still in the capital working on whatever he had to do for them to advance his quest with the Church of Halstead. Then he promised that he would journey to Ghazban to check it out. Only time would tell, I guessed.
Getting killed, and having my body incinerated after my mind was uploaded to become an HI or hybrid intelligence by Quantum Games, didn’t do anything good for my level of trust; but I was working on it. In many ways, my life here was better than anything I experienced in the real world -- well, except for getting chewed on by monsters. That never stopped sucking.
The meaning of ‘real’ was the question, anyway. Both the AI and a weird creature which had claimed to be from another world said that perception was reality. If that was the case, then why wasn’t this world as real as Earth? It was the only life I had left, anyway; so, real or not, I needed to hang onto it.
I was pulled from my wandering thoughts when the merchant suddenly yelped in pain. I stepped back quickly. The last thing I needed was for some wandering guard to imagine that I had hurt the man. As I stepped back, I saw that the culprit was a little girl.
No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t a little girl. She was little enough for sure, but her features were far more mature, and her general shape was off a bit. She couldn’t have been more than three feet tall, so unless Legends of Selmia now sported a midget option, then this was the first gnome I had met. And yes, I knew that midget wasn’t the correct term, but if a guy can’t be improper in his own head, then what was the world coming to. It was enough that I didn’t know how much of my thoughts the AI could read.
The merchant fell to the ground, clutching his shin and making more noise than a stuck pig. And I should know, I’d speared more than one wild boar in the past few months.
“Guards! Guards! I’m under attack.”
The gnome grinned at me, then hopped over the fallen merchant. Well, not so much over him, as much as she hopped on top of him and then bounded past him. She grabbed a tray of eggs, threw down a pair of silver coins, and then ran. When I didn’t move, she looked back at me and asked, “Are you coming?”
I certainly didn’t want to be there when the merchants arrived. I might be level thirty-six now and capable of defeating the guards, but that wouldn’t do anything to help my faction. So, I ran after her; or rather, I started to. She moved her little legs pretty fast, but it still wasn’t anything beyond a slow jog for me.
I heard a whistle from a guard and thought better of this situation. I leaned forward and grabbed the gnome in my arms. She squealed in protest but didn’t fight. She had to know it was the smart move. Then I strode out and ran. My legs were still bowed, but the extra points in Agility had really paid dividends, as I was able to run faster than any non-rogue human I had seen so far. Long legs were good for something.
I ran till we were out of town. Suddenly, I felt a bony little elbow shoved into my side. “You can put me down now; I think we got away.”
She was definitely a feisty one. “Sorry, I just wanted to get far enough to be sure. But now, maybe you can tell me why you did that?”
“Did what? Helped you out?” The gnome asked while setting the tray of eggs on the ground.
“Yeah, I mean I guess you paid him, so it wasn’t really stealing but, you did kick him.”
