The Way of the Shaman

Barliona is a vast virtual world where millions of players escape into thrilling fantasy adventures, battling monsters and dragons, mastering magic, and becoming legendary heroes or cunning thieves. Players often immerse themselves for months, enjoying a realm where anything goes, governed by a primary rule: no player should feel actual pain.

Yet, for a specific group, Barliona is far from a game—it's a brutal digital prison. These are not typical adventurers chasing loot or glory, but criminals forced into the virtual realm to serve their sentences. For them, Barliona transforms into a grueling, personal hell, where the usual safeguards are removed. Their singular, desperate objective is to survive this unforgiving virtual inferno, turning what was once a game into the ultimate, high-stakes survival quest.

Barliona is a virtual world built on the latest technology, where the government has backed in-game currency and millions flood in pursuit of easy money. For real-world convicts, it is something else entirely: a prison sentence served in special auto-maintenance capsules while their minds are released into Barliona's virtual mines. Dmitry Mahan has survived the worst of it, sentenced to eight years of hard labor and saddled with two of the game's least popular roles—the Shaman class and the profession of Jeweler.

In the second installment of The Way of the Shaman LitRPG series, Mahan's fight for survival in Barliona continues to be anything but virtual. The Kartoss Gambit raises the stakes as Mahan navigates a world where the line between game mechanics and genuine danger blurs with every passing quest, and where an unpopular class and an underestimated profession may yet prove to be his greatest assets in a system designed to break him.

In The Phantom Castle, Book 4 of the Way of the Shaman LitRPG series, Daniel Mahan’s turbulent journey through the virtual world of Barliona persists. Initially sentenced to an 8-year term in Barliona's virtual jail, Mahan has already faced immense hardship, from grueling mine labor and betrayal by fellow prisoners to a retrial that finally freed him into the common world.

Despite the opportunity to maintain a low profile and enjoy relative freedom for the remainder of his sentence, Mahan’s nature as a powerful Shaman prevents him from staying on the sidelines. He quickly rises to become a formidable clan leader. Now, he embarks on a new, perilous quest, guiding fifty of Barliona’s top players deep into the enigmatic Dark Forest to uncover its hidden secrets and claim what lies within. For Mahan, Barliona remains an arena for survival and ambition.

In The Karmadont Chess Set, book five of the thrilling LitRPG series The Way of the Shaman, High Shaman Mahan faces a critical challenge: his game clan, the Legends of Barliona, desperately needs a castle to thrive. Accepting an offer from the Emperor and the Dark Lord, Mahan embarks on a quest to cleanse Altameda, the phantom castle, of its ghostly inhabitants. What appears to be a straightforward mission quickly spirals into a momentous chain of events, forcing Mahan to abandon strategy and rely solely on his sharp intuition and instincts. With the added pressure of being hunted by the continent's three most powerful clans, the Shaman must navigate treacherous territory and survive against overwhelming odds.

The fifth installment of The Way of the Shaman LitRPG series finds Mahan restless in a Barliona that has finally settled back into a familiar rhythm. The winds of the Dark Forest have died down, Altameda has recognized its new owner, and even the scheming Geranika is biding his time with fresh plans for global destruction. But High Shaman Mahan was never built for the daily grind—and a quiet Barliona is a Barliona he cannot stand.

New adventures are on the horizon: a new apprentice to find among those who have no right to summon Spirits; a one-of-a-kind ship to commission; and a new chapter in his personal life that remains tantalizingly unwritten. The Karmadont Chess Set delivers new storylines, new monsters, and new dungeons as Mahan charges headlong into the next stage of his Barliona career—proving that for the High Shaman, the most dangerous game is always the one he has not yet played.

The adventures of Daniel Mahan, the legendary Shaman of the Barliona game-world, continue in The Hour of Pain (a bonus story) and Clans War, Book #7 of the LitRPG series. Mahan believed he had served his time, completing eleven months of virtual reality battles in exchange for an eight-year prison sentence. Yet, Barliona refuses to release its grip so easily. The boundary between his real and virtual realities begins to blur, revealing a sinister truth: leaving the capsule is not an option until the enigmatic "Way" is fully completed. The Shaman must now confront an even greater challenge, as his freedom hinges on navigating the complex and increasingly dangerous intertwining of his two worlds.

The seventh volume of The Way of the Shaman LitRPG series delivers a seismic upheaval to the world of Barliona. Daniel Mahan—known to everyone as Shaman Mahan—believed he had taken his sixth and final step in the gameworld, only for the Corporation to intervene with a decision that resets everything. The Corporation's CEO personally initiates the reset, and Geranika and his Dragon of Shadow spring back to life, undoing hard-won victories in an instant.

Now the Corporation makes Mahan an offer he cannot refuse, plunging him back into the chaos of a Barliona reshaped by the resurrection of the Lord of Shadow and his entire host. Clans War forces the High Shaman to confront the full weight of institutional power bearing down on a player who has made himself impossible to ignore—and to decide how far he is willing to go when the rules of the game itself are rewritten against him.