The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (ebook reader for comics .TXT) 📗

“I don’t think that’s necessary. I believe you,” I chuckled.

“All right. Now to the bad news. Remember the Sphere employees who visited you to sign the advertising contract?”

“Yes, of course. What’s wrong?”

“One of them, the Japanese, is from security. They bugged your apartment, probably just in case, it’s standard procedure for them. There’s no outdoor surveillance, however, and that means they don’t make much of it.”

“Bugs? Are they eavesdropping on me?”

“Exactly. We didn’t jam the signal, so as not to arouse suspicion. But be careful, don’t say too much out loud. Make all calls only via Courier, its protocol cannot be decrypted, got it? And save my number. If anything happens, call me any time.”

“If anything happens? What can happen?”

“Don’t worry. We’re looking out for you.”

* * *

I decided to log into Sphere after 2 AM. I couldn’t sleep without Alena anyway. Pandorum, of course, was an international alliance that could cover any and all time zones, but still. Very little had changed inside Atrocity’s respawn room, other than the team that guarded the cage. Jerkhan and Roa had vanished.

While being incorporeal, I carefully studied the room. If they weren’t tracing my login, they probably hadn’t noticed me appear. Ghosts could be seen at the resp point, but there were so many that hiding among them was easy enough.

All right, then. Five Pandas were lazing around the cage, casually talking to each other in German and Swedish — the premium linguistics pack I had received together with the Diamond account could instantly translate any known language.

Three of them were melee fighters, and two were mages. There was one more — the assassin got thrown out of stealth mode after stepping inside the range of Star Metal Wrath, a passive ability of my sword that disabled invisibility and restored true form to all masked creatures. I hastily turned it off — I didn’t want to give myself away in such a foolish manner.

The unmasked Panda was greeted with a burst of laughter. He turned his head around, confused, and returned to stealth. All jailors were wearing black predator-styled armor of different types, yet with a subtly similar design.

So, where had they hidden the stonejammer? I had spent a whole evening reading about them on the forums. It was a magotechnical artifact, a pretty expensive one, that couldn’t be farther than a hundred feet from the resp point. It didn’t have a long range and was pretty fragile to boot. I had seen one of them back at the Tomb of the Necromancer when we had been attacked by Snow and her gang; that stonejammer had looked like a big, shining, spiky globe. There wasn’t anything like that here. Where could they have put it? Did they disguise it with a spell? Bury it in the floor?

The situation seemed pretty dire. Without destroying the stonejammer, I couldn’t leave the resp point. In theory, if I caught the Pandas unaware, I could kill them with my flaming sword, but that would raise an alarm, and I could never leave the fortress alive.

While wandering around the room, my eyes stumbled onto a murky object above the respawn cage. I looked up, studied the item...that’s right, a dull metallic ball was hanging right below the ceiling. It was barely visible in the dim light, making it hard to notice. A smart idea. Was it the stonejammer? Its size matched.

Well, no harm in trying. The Pandas, of course, were ready for everything and would focus on me in a few seconds — I still remembered my deaths at the resp point in Eyre. Still, a few seconds were a lot. I had to find out.

I manifested. In the split seconds while they were turning their crossbows toward me, and magic fire lit on the tips of their battle wands, I threw my blade at the dark sphere.

Fiery Lightning! A flash of blue-red flame shot from the sword, connecting me and my target via a bright thread. The metallic ball disappeared in an explosion, and at the same time, I was hit with a cloud of green smoke, a barrage of spells, and a sticky web that wrapped around me, restricting any movement. I couldn’t see anything, my vision blinded because of the bright flash, and my body writhed in pain. In a second, my hit points reached zero.

All in all, it took me only three seconds to die, and once again, I was a fleck of mist. The resurrecting stone didn’t trigger — after all, the chance was only thirty percent, and there wasn’t any point in activating it, anyway. Still, I had accomplished my purpose, and the stonejammer was destroyed! Time to get out.

Return failed! Transportation via Soul Stones is forbidden in this area!

Chapter 4

WHAT THE... I took a look into the log and ground my teeth inside my mind. The Fiery Lightning had destroyed an empty metallic ball; there had been no stonejammer inside. It was a decoy, a fake. Scumbags!

The cage door creaked as it was opened. Two mercenaries went in: one in the front, the other covering his back. The first quickly snatched everything I had dropped — almost a hundred gold, boots, a flask, and two vials, a Healing Potion and an Antidote. Two more deaths, and I would be essentially naked, and that’s despite my blue karma. Red- and yellow-colored guys dropped everything that wasn’t bound to them.

My options? The best one seemed to be to petition the admins like the forums recommended. I could just contact my personal manager, Akiru Sokolovskaya, directly. Maybe it would help me get out of here sooner.

Yet damned if I wanted to give up so easily. I really wanted to teach those ruffians a lesson. Time and again, I looked around the dark hall, trying to guess where the bastards