Shadow Seer (Rogue Merchant Book #3): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (english reading book TXT) 📗

Crossroads are the intersections of threads. They are stable, but the picture around them is constantly shifting. Do you understand me?”

“Nope,” I confessed. I did have my own plans for shipping ellurite out. I remembered a certain someone saying if I helped him, he would help me in turn. That was his own promise.

“In short, there are hundreds of thousands of options,” Olaf concluded. “We can try brute-forcing it, but really, there’s no telling where we might end up. It would be nice if the Crossroads we find is empty. But what if we fall into a trap like Hird today?”

He chuckled. We had looted a lot from Hird. Battles like that were always sweet—as long as you were the winner, naturally.

Just as expected, the cavern didn’t change. The collapsed Ziggurate was surrounded by a lake of ellurite, and pointed spires of the Temple of Shadows loomed in the distance. There was one difference, however—the cave was infested with poisonous ellurite slimes slithering across the bottom of the lake.

While the Watchers gathered loot, searched the Ziggurate, and cleared the cavern from the slimes, the Jordi set up camp, getting ready for a long stay. They would have to spend more than a few weeks there. Some were already using their pickaxes to test the nearest boulders and edric stalagmites. They seemed content, going by the tone of their non-stop swearing. Djarvi came up to me.

“There’s lots of other good stuff on top of ellurite and edra,” he informed me. “Greord, malachite, maybe even silverite, judging by the presence of mornlode crystals. Can we mine them too?”

“As long as it doesn’t hurt your main job. We’ll split the profits fifty-fifty. Transportation at your expense.”

“You bet!” Djarvi nodded, satisfied.

“How curious.” I heard a familiar voice coming from behind me. When I looked there, I saw nobody, even with my Shadow Sight. Where was that midget hiding? How did he manage to sneak up on me every single time?

I sharply turned 180 degrees and finally caught the snickering Abel with my eyes. The Watchers’ HR was playing with me, skillfully staying out of my sight. What a trickster!

“How are you doing it?” I asked.

“I’ll show you if you tell me about your archetype. Are you a servitor or a priest of Tormis?”

“I’m not sure myself,” I replied evasively.

“Show me your profile; I’ll have a look.”

Hmm. The profile was basically a virtual ID card of my character with all of his stats, abilities, SP count, and gear. Usually, it was used by the clan leaders when evaluating candidates for joining. Sending a full profile basically meant disclosing all data about your character, including your inventory, storage, financial transactions, and personal messages. Thankfully, you could pick and choose what to show by unchecking various sections. After fiddling with it for a bit, I sent Abel a stripped-down profile with only my attributes and archetype abilities.

“Wow, a proxy? Shadow Listener? That’s really cool, HotCat! I’m a Master Thief. My abilities are very different, and you got the perception and control branch. It kinda resembles Shadowmaster but not quite. How long can you stay in the Shadow?”

So what was the Shadow Plane? As I read the forums, I had tried to figure it out, but no such luck. Apparently, the world consisted of three dimensions: the Material Plane, the Shadow Plane, and the Plane of Dreams. Shadow was considered to be a reflection of the Material Plane, a “lining” of sorts. It was a two-dimensional space saturated with various shades of grey. Those who entered the Shadow using special spells, abilities, and items could move much faster, covering great distances and reaching hidden, inaccessible places. They could also see its quasi-alive inhabitants, shadows, and speak their weird tongue, Shadowspeak. Access to Shadow Plane was unlocked via epic archetypes, legendary items, and rare rituals; it was unavailable to ordinary players and gave a huge, almost unfair, advantage. Libra, the Plane of Dreams, was even more complicated; I decided not to bother. I wasn’t sure why developers needed gameplay elements of such complexity.

Abel told me a lot of useful stuff. Theory was one thing, but his practical knowledge was something else. According to him, Shadow Plane allowed him to overcome any obstacles, except for specifically enchanted areas. If you stayed there too long, however, you would be thrust out into the material world with half of your health and a powerful dizziness debuff. The inhabitants of that plane, shadows, came in two kinds, lesser and supreme. The first was harmless, but the second group was dangerous and malevolent. Abel recommended I keep clear of them, and if necessary, use scrolls of Lightning and Flash. Sudden bright light destroyed shadows outright, annihilating their structure. He also said that light mages were the worst enemies of all shadow users; they were capable of creating areas without any shadows at all.

“If the Hird had the sense to cast a Circle of Light around their priest, I would have never gotten close to him,” Abel concluded.

“I still don’t get how you killed him. Didn’t Throgg give them complete invincibility?”

“Yes. Almost one hundred resistance to everything,” Abel said with a nod. “I didn’t hit him; it was pointless. I just used Disarm to knock his ritual dagger out of his hand. Thieves have this skill: it removes your weapon and sometimes even breaks it.”

“I see. And how do you manage to sneak up on me all the time?”

“Ah, that’s just a trick. It’s called Shadowing or Mirroring. I leave the Shadow right behind the target and copy their movements. I’m small; it’s easy for me. Nobody can see me unless I want them to.”

He showed me this technique; it didn’t seem complicated but required insane concentration and predicting the movements of the person being “mirrored.” Abel had mastered it—if he slipped out of sight, he could hide behind his “target”