Shaman's Call- Frostburn: A Litrpg Adventure Read online

  Shaman’s Call- Frostburn

  by

  Sean Oswald

  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- Frostburn

  Copyright © 2021

  Sean Oswald

  Cover art copyright

  © Sean Oswald

  Cover art created by Ian Bugayong

  Contents

  Prologue- Download and Burn

  Chapter 1- Legalese

  Chapter 2- Death Sucks

  Chapter 3- Being Useful

  Chapter 4- No Place Like Home?

  Chapter 5- Wandering in the Woods

  Chapter 6- Legend of the Oni

  Chapter 7- Uggh… It’s What’s for Dinner

  Chapter 8- The Way to an Ogre’s Heart

  Chapter 9- Village Cook

  Chapter 10- To Hunt or Be Hunted?

  Chapter 11- Planning a Build

  Chapter 12- Mundane

  Chapter 13- New Plan

  Chapter 14- Apprentice

  Chapter 15- Played as a Pawn

  Chapter 16- What Now?

  Chapter 17- Watch Your Back

  Chapter 18- Ogre Raid

  Chapter 19- Odd Tastes

  Interlude 1- Those Brutes

  Chapter 20- Affinity

  Chapter 21- Retaliation

  Interlude 2- Bait?

  Chapter 22- Bumping Ooglies

  Chapter 23- Digital Dreams

  Chapter 24- Organization

  Interlude 3- Stalling

  Chapter 25- New Abilities

  Chapter 26- Adds

  Chapter 27- Unexpected Rewards

  Chapter 28- Looking for Trouble

  Interlude 4- No Way Out

  Chapter 29- Making Friends

  Chapter 30- Trial Run

  Chapter 31- Rotten Core

  Chapter 32- A Face Behind the Face

  Chapter 33- A Narrow Escape?

  Chapter 34- Negotiating

  Chapter 35- One More Hunt

  Chapter 36- Rebuilding

  Chapter 37- Dark Kitty

  Chapter 38- Discretion

  Chapter 39- Rumors

  Chapter 40- Uneasy Truce

  Epilogue-

  Prologue- Download and Burn

  “Upload team reports that subject HI 3a5.x290 has been successfully integrated into the system,” Damien said over his commlink

  “Was the upload a success?” Asked a demanding voice on the other side of the commlink.

  “You’d have to ask the tech boys about that, but I’m sure the AI has already sent you a report. The operator who handled it called it a zinger, if that is helpful,” Damien replied.

  “Excellent news indeed. Far too few remain that intact. Now, clear out the unit. Sanitize and remove all indications of Mr. Rudd’s existence. The U.N. demands that we be very thorough, and you know how I hate explaining sloppy work to some bureaucrat. Oh and be fast, I’ve already notified the Department of Housing and Relocation that there is a vacancy.” The voice spoke with an air of finality, then the commlink went dead.

  Damien looked around the small apartment. It was fairly typical of a single user unit. There was probably a waiting list for it already. He turned to his crew. They were all robots, so none of them cared what was happening. To them, this was just taking out the trash. Even the biological matter removal unit saw this as nothing but raw material.

  “We are cleared to clear out and recycle this unit. Maximum sanitization has been ordered.”

  The machines all responded with synthesized human voices to demonstrate their understanding. It creeped Damien out, but an early programmer probably felt it made the machines more relatable and the habit had just stuck. He jumped as he saw one machine grabbing a wallet from the small end table near where the immersion pod had been.

  The pod was already removed. He had done dozens of these cleanups and the tech boys from Quantum Games always made sure to take the pods with them when they finished the upload. They left the body, no better to think of it as bio-matter, behind, but at least this time it wasn’t messy. More often than not, the heads exploded during the uploads. No muss, no fuss this time.

  He grabbed the wallet before the robot could incinerate it. He barked at it, “Let me review this first.”

  Wallets were kind of antiquated, but there might be credit chips in it or something. It wasn’t like this guy was gonna need it where he was going. Most credits might be handled over the net now, but sometimes there were still old forms of physical currency.

  As he leafed through the wallet, he didn’t find any currency, but then Damien noticed the picture of an attractive girl. He scanned the data on the upload subject, Mr. Rudd. Oh, a sister, perfect. Girlfriends were fine but sisters often needed comforting after hearing about the demise of their loved one. Easy pickups then, better than crashing a wedding.

  Chapter 1- Legalese

  The first thought that kept going through my head was, “How, the hell did I get here?”

  It wasn’t very practical, considering how much I was required to focus just to stay alive. That didn’t keep the thought from popping into my head repeatedly. I should have been more focused on the monsters chasing me. That thought alone made me groan. Monsters.

  They were hairless half-ape, half-lizard things, propelling themselves along the ground on their knuckles and feet. Hissing sounds showed how angry they were with me, but it was the sharp teeth I was more concerned about. Of course, I could understand why they might be mad at me. I had sorta popped into their cave.

  That brought me back to the original question, the big one. How had I ended up here? Though the how wasn’t going to keep me from being eaten. It would have to wait till later. There were more pressing questions, like where and what. Not where I was now, but where was I supposed to go? I needed to escape, that much was obvious. I knew where I was. Sorta. It just didn’t make any sense. Knowing where I was didn’t matter much if I didn’t believe it was possible for me to be here. It was hard to even consider the how when I didn’t believe this was possible. Yet here I was.

  I was running across the ice and snow-covered grounds through the sparse forest in a rocky zone known as Eastern Kimira. That much I knew from hours of playing Legends of Selmia. It was a popular virtual reality game, and I had been playing it for the past month in a closed beta. I really hadn’t spent that much time in this zone. It was an odd case of a zone that had good hunting for players in-between levels seven and fifteen. The problem was that there were a few rare monsters that would consume players in that range with a single bite.

  No one wants to risk death penalties or lose an entire session worth of progress to a random monster. Now as I ran along, panting, feeling the cold air on my face I realized just how happy I would be to just lose some gaming time. That didn’t change what I was experiencing. It did, however, make me wonder why I had ever signed up to play this game.

  Early access in exchange for being a guinea pig and bug finder had seemed like a great deal. The game featured cutting edge realism in its virtual reality, and I certainly wouldn’t have the money to pay for the type of immersion pod that was requir
ed to maximize this experience. Even the lesser quality gear I had was stretched to its technical limits. Despite that, the experience was beyond anything I had played before. It had almost felt like real life. Today was different, though. Today it was upgraded even beyond that. If anything, this felt more tangible than the real world.

  How, should be the big question. But I realized I was repeating the same questions. Yelling at myself for answers I didn’t possess was probably not productive. The last thing I remembered before landing smack dab in the middle of a monster nest was logging out last night. I had been so tired from pushing to finish a quest that I might have actually fallen asleep inside my pod. I’m not exactly proud of it but that had happened more than once.

  Today I had woken in the game and not after logging in. This shouldn’t be possible. I wasn’t even wearing my rig, or at least I didn’t think I was. The normal player's HUD display was not present. I could normally see my name under an image of my character. I realized my mind was wandering again. This was too real to be a dream, too vivid for even the highest end immersion gear and too serious for me to be trying to figure out silly things like how it happened. How wouldn’t matter if I ended up in the mouths of the snapjaws.

  Oh sure, I should just respawn if I was killed. Even as real as fighting and dying felt in Legends of Selmia, it wasn’t the same thing. There was always the knowledge that this was just a game, a certainty that I would respawn with the penalty of some lost XP and a corpse run. Now, that assurance wasn’t there. This was just too real.

  The mind is an amazing thing. I end up in this nest of monsters, waking up to feel them snapping at me. Start running, well, trying to run. My feet didn’t seem to do what I wanted. Then there was the other thing. These were definitely snapjaws. I had fought them a few times in game, but they seemed smaller.

  It was then that my foot hit a rock, and I stumbled forward, hitting the ground. It hurt, but not as much as I had expected. I looked at my hands and noticed something was very wrong. They had an odd gray tint, but that thought was pushed out of my mind as I felt the oversized fists of the first snapjaw slam into my back. A second later I felt jaws bite down onto my shoulder.

  I am so screwed. These things were strong and never let go once they locked on. I had seen the tank in my pickup groups get pulled down more than once by a trio of snapjaws. Now one was on me and my character was a wizard. I’d be torn to pieces. I was feeling actual pain. Not the muted pain of the game. Full on intense, makes me want to vomit pain.

  A rage surged through me and I clamored to my feet as I slammed my right hand into the head of the beast chewing at my left shoulder. Never mind how my arms seemed to be longer than they should be, it worked. I felt the bones of the creature’s face crunch and give way. Its eye socket collapsed, and a combination of blood and clear fluid poured out.

  The thing lost its hold on me and collapsed at my feet, whimpering in the snow. My blood was pumping, and I felt an anger that rarely came over me in real life. It was something I had worked so hard to keep buried, but here it was. I had to go with it and before I even realized it, there was a tree branch in my hands. I had ripped it off a fallen tree, but it was still a solid piece of wood.

  I swung it at the next snap jaw with two hands like a baseball bat. This time not only did the bones crunch, but there was a splatting sound as brain matter flew everywhere. The force of my blow had ripped the head off of the snapjaw. Its body flew through the air to land a few feet away.

  The last adult from the cave was now moving more cautiously, stalking around me. I used the respite to smash my tree branch down in a vertical thrust into the head of the dying beast at my feet. That simple motion split its skull open and rather than being disgusted, I felt a certain sick pleasure. It was good to smash my enemies.

  The remaining beast howled at me, and before I realized what I was doing, I howled back at the creature. It was a monstrous sound that escaped my lips, but I didn’t care. The puny creature had dared to attack me and now must die.

  A tiny notification popped up that I ignored:

  You have only partially resisted Ogre’s Rage. Duration: 12 seconds. Hostility increased by 207% Spell Casting Disabled.

  Instead of waiting for the last snapjaw to attack, I stepped forward and swung. The beast dodged my smashing blow, but the ground was broken up by the blow and the club was split in half so that it had a jagged end at what had been halfway up its length.

  It lunged at me again. This time I managed to dodge it. I could feel how I had almost tripped over my own feet, but almost only counts in hand grenades and nuclear bombs. The simple fact that it had rushed me put it within range of my now modified weapon. I thrust the broken branch at the beast. The jagged tip pieced the leathery hide and I felt my muscles tighten as I pushed with all my strength. It was almost shocking to see that I had managed to bury two feet of the branch into the creature’s chest. At least it wasn’t trying to bite me anymore.

  Then I dropped the branch and the snapjaw’s corpse to the ground. I beat at my chest as I saw my final foe fall. Then I felt a pressure in my head and closed my eyes. Notifications popped up. They were like the ones I would have gotten while playing Legends of Selmia, but as with the world around me, everything was so much more vivid.

  I clicked on the first notification since it was highlighted in an angry red color.

  Notice-

  Clause 103.94(b) of your contract for early access to Legends of Selmia has been triggered. Effective immediately, the consciousness formerly known as Franklin Rudd has been severed from its corporeal form and downloaded to the quantum servers as the digital entity Hybrid Intelligence (HI) 3a5.x290

  Authorization for activation of said clause is pursuant to United Nations Decree Omega 616.

  Heretofore, HI 3a5.x290 will be assigned the task of operating Ogre MOB Unit 17,934. Interface with controlling AI will be required and processing power borrowed as needed.

  Three directives initiated:

  1) All Hybrid Intelligences are prohibited from revealing to players through any conscious action of theirs that they were formerly human.

  2) All Hybrid Intelligences exist to ensure the enjoyment of the player base of Legends of Selmia or for such other activities as Quantum Games or controlling AI may see fit to require subject to the limitations of United Nations Decree Omega 616. All actions must be calculated to ensure maximum enjoyment and engagement for human players.

  3) All Hybrid Intelligences are prohibited from accessing their base bio-digital coding. Quantum Games and the controlling AI shall have sole discretion for modifications including personality, processing power, and avatar construction subject to the limitations of United Nations Decree Omega 616.

  More information will be available as objectives are met.

  Your acceptance is not necessary.

  My brain hurt after reading that. It was more legalese than I wanted to read. I had no idea what that United Nations’ decree was. I did know that life on Earth had sucked for as long as I had been alive and that the United Nations was constantly in the business of draining resources from one part of the planet for another part.

  The end of war and universal peace under one government had brought anything but increased happiness to the world. More and more there wasn’t enough food, water, or even clean air, let alone room for all the Earth’s sixty billion people. Most people played games like Legends of Selmia because there wasn’t much else to do.

  AI’s and machines ran much of the world and humans didn’t have to do much work wise, but they also found little fulfillment. So, all sorts of virtual realities had been created to provide something for the masses to do. I might not know what any of this was, but I did have an idea what hybrid intelligence was.

  One night when I couldn’t sleep, I had been streaming some documentary about possible next steps in human evolution. The concept that had caught my attention was the idea of merging human consciousness with AI in a digital construct. AI had
never achieved the creativity of humanity, but was vastly more efficient. It was thought that there might be a way to make people live forever, or at least as long as they cared to live and to do so in virtual worlds of their own design.

  It sounded like I had been co-opted through some hidden clause in my contract to serve as a test subject, not just in the game but for my real life. I had to hope this was just part of the game, but for now I was beginning to assume that I was stuck here. My physical body would have been destroyed to make room for the people left and my mind put to work inside the game world. The problem was it didn’t sound like I was going to get to live as some hybrid intelligence god in control of my own virtual reality, but instead had been turned into a slave for the players.

  This sucked, and there were no two ways about it. I found myself cursing under my breath, but somehow, I couldn’t seem to develop the level of righteous indignation that I thought I should. It was odd. I was angry, but I had felt more emotion when I raged against the snapjaws.

  Reactions Modified: Emotional Stability Maintained.

  That notification should have freaked me out even more, but I just couldn’t care that much. Time to focus on what I knew.