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

Finally made flesh, I swiftly rolled forward, finding myself on the very brink of the chasm, and jumped right off the edge.

Chapter 11

THE BLACK WATER MIRROR covered in green haze rapidly gained on me. I thought I could see the cracks on the sharp stalagmite spires looming below. Even if I didn’t impale myself on them, falling from such a height would surely kill me. Still, I had one more trick in store.

Shadow Run! I activated that ability, and my fall immediately slowed down, letting me float like a feather, hovering in the air in the colorless grey world.

A large shadow, a blob of darkness in the shape of a large manta, broke away from the Stone Forest that looked like a colossal stalagmite adorned with a crown of ruins. It darted forward to meet me. A second later, it swooped up my falling shadow shell and carried it away. I was sitting on the back of its neck as if riding an unusual mount.

Light flared behind us: pale and weak, it nonetheless reached us from the material world. As I looked back, I saw a Circle of Light spell form specks on the black water, one after another. Blurry grey silhouettes of Pandas flew down on the back of their birdies, raining light across the area of my potential fall. So they figured out that I had moved to the Shadow Plane when my signal disappeared from their search sphere. I wondered which of them was a seeker; it wasn’t obvious by their gear. A player or a pawn? If I got rid of them first, tracking me down would become much harder...

But the place where they searched was already empty. We were rapidly retreating, and my shadow mount confidently carried me where I had told it to go. Distance was calculated differently in the Shadow Plane; space there was “shrunk down.” Almost immediately, the pillar of the Stone Forest disappeared from my sight, fading in the grey shroud.

It was a frightening flight, in the complete silence of a dimension that inspired nothing but terror. The water there resembled thick flowing fog, black serpentine silhouettes writhing in its depths. Each time my mount saw anything like that, it gained altitude, and I sensed a strange anxiety that increased the closer we got to my destination.

Thrainul hadn’t gotten the chance to go far and was sailing above the surface, although in the Shadow, I would have found him even underwater. The Abyssal turned out to be the pale green skeleton of a giant turtle, slowly moving its flippers, hazy figures of players and NPCs bustling about its insides. We swooped down, easily going through the physical obstacles, and I ended up where I had wanted to—in the hull, where I saw several familiar coffins.

My companion transmitted an empathic pulse, which I didn’t understand, and sharply threw me off its back. Was it discontent? Impatient? My Shadow Run was about to end, and I had to leave the Shadow Plane. We made it.

“You can go home. You are free,” I relayed to the supreme shadow.

“I need food.”

I felt an overwhelming hunger: intense and demanding, driving me crazy. Through the bulkheads, I could see the blurry silhouettes of the crew, and so could the shadow. Suddenly, I realized that it considered all of them food, including myself. It was barely refraining from attacking me! Only my title as a Listener and ability to talk to shadows kept it at bay. However, going by the description of Proxy’s abilities, I could command it, and it had to obey.

“I command you to go,” I rephrased the order. “Leave this place at once!”

A cloud of indignation and scorching anger almost knocked me off my feet. It couldn’t! Yes, the shadow was supposed to obey my commands, but it really couldn’t leave the ship. To follow an order, it required food. Too much of its energy had been spent transporting me there, and the creature wanted to replenish it. Even more than wanted—it anxiously coveted it, trembling with the desire to absorb someone’s lifeforce. Its emotions were so powerful that I couldn’t help but feel scared. What had I brought on the ship?

As the shadow grew in size, it transformed into something horrible. I flinched back, seeing it advance and fill out the space around us, snake-like and fanged, reaching out to me with its long claws.

“Payment. We talked about payment. I need food!”

“Can I give it to you?”

I shouldn’t have asked. Its claws pierced my shadow shell, and I gasped as icy pain skewered my body.

Drain Essence decreased your Constitution by 1!

Drain Essence decreased your Strength by 1!

Flashing crimson lines in my combat log informed me about permanent attribute loss. Permanent! You could drain a character to zero; what the hell? I had thought it would take health or mana, but attributes? I never expected that!

“Stop it! Get away from me!”

A metal door creaked, and I heard the sound of footsteps—someone had come down to the hold at their own peril.

The monster reluctantly let go of me and slipped into the doorway as a swirling cloud of black smoke, heading right to the staircase that led to the upper deck. It smelled new prey.

It was Fayana. She couldn’t see us in the Shadow, neither with her ordinary sight nor her seeker abilities. Most likely, she had come there by accident. The shadow coiled around her and opened wide its pseudo-maw, preparing to attack the girl.

I was thrust out of the Shadow, losing half of my health and getting a lot of various debuffs. Unable to keep balance, I collapsed on the floor and started shaking my head, trying to make sense of the walls swimming before me. Shadow Run had expired, and I knew that I shouldn’t linger in that