Battle for the North (Rogue Merchant Book #4): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (best beach reads of all time .txt) 📗

urgent repairs. In fact, Pandorum had lost two-thirds of their astral fleet over the first day of fighting a Russian alliance that wasn’t even in the top 10. Yes, they were victorious and won the kill rating, but everyone knew that it was achieved only by neutralizing the castles — otherwise, the Pandas would be deep in the red efficiency-wise. But in any case, nobody had any doubts about the outcome of the war. Pandorum had once again proved their invincibility. Fleet losses could always be recouped; our enemies had more than enough money to do that.

To my surprise, almost nothing had changed after my day-long absence. After a series of intense battles, both sides were dead asleep. Low-intensity scrambles, territory battles — even the last two castles belonging to our alliance were left untouched.

I opened several websites with blueprints of astral ships and various trade calculators used to monitor the Bazaar market. I needed to find out how much fuel the enemy fleet spent on jumping back and forth. The fuel used by elemental engines, ship reactors, and spelljumpers was based on ellurite. And ellurite, in the end, could be bought and sold.

* * *

As soon as Tao logged in, he found himself in the thick of things. Like always, bereft of its leader, the clan was stagnating and sitting it out — right at the time when the activity and initiative of ordinary members were vital! He started dishing out kicks, sending out static parties to action, each having received a portion of his vehement anger and a combat mission.

All of Dorsa was swept up in a war, Pandorum running rampant in the west and Ananizarte wreaking havoc on the east and southeast. After the fall of Golden Fairs and a global crying fit on the forums, it was time for the routine takeover of the territories. The forces of the House of Darkness moved via pentagrams and captured one outpost after another, occupying the NPC Kingdom. Demoralized by losing most of their legions, home resp point, and Archon rulers, Fairians barely mustered any resistance. The next objectives were the southern borderlands and the wildlands that stretched to the very coast. They belonged to several player alliances.

Tao harbored no illusions. The war posed only a leisurely interest to him, being an instrument rather than the goal. The goal pursued by the leader of PROJECT HELL hadn’t changed — Divine Blood. Tao wanted to get it at any cost.

The continental quest with Dan-na-Eyre’s Crown had stalled, seemingly impossible to complete. The city was full of Northern mercenaries driven out of their lands. He had already slipped up with them once, his losses exceeding all reasonable limits with no result to show for them.

There was another way, riskier but more realistic. By following it, Tao first became Ananizarte’s vassal and then spearheaded all players who joined the House of Darkness. To get the blood, he needed to get as close to the goddess as possible.

“Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected,” Tao whispered the words of an ancient philosopher.

* * *

I logged into Sphere right before the alliance meeting planned by our leaders. Most of the players online were in Eyre, with some trying to defend the doomed outposts in remote areas. The meeting was basically the alliance leader telling us via Courier about the current situation and their plans for dealing with it.

It was a real talkfest, nothing less than a debate. According to Mook, Komtur, and Crow, the military campaign was only just beginning. Yes, the alliance had lost half of its holdings and three castles and, most likely, was going to lose the rest — and soon. The Northerners had only two castles left: Brethren’s citadel to the east and Varangian’s stronghold somewhere on the islands to the far north. The Pandas were bound to attempt to take them, stripping us of our last footholds.

Our leaders also said that we were going to drastically change our tactics. Throwing ourselves under Pandorum’s roller was pointless — everyone knew that after our losing streak. Instead of heroic resistance, the Northerners would switch to guerilla warfare. The captured territories would become hell for our enemies. From now on, our motto was going to be all-encompassing terror! Farming, mining, crafting — any kind of peaceful activities in our former territories would be impossible. That’s how our strategists wanted to disperse and offset the enemies’ numerical superiority and gradually push them out, harassing them day and night.

Our ranks were rapidly dwindling. The carebear clans left after realizing that our PVP players couldn’t provide them protection. People who had joined the alliance for money, prestige, or reputation abandoned ship, as well as those who couldn’t handle the pace and ferocity of the battles. Basically, all we had left were true believers willing to fight till the end. To my surprise, there were a lot of them.

Following the proven tactics, the players were separated into groups of forty to fifty strong and got assigned two or three areas each. I had no idea how painful this plan could be for Pandorum. In my opinion, we needed to strip our enemies from their main trump card. All their battles had been won by quickly moving their astral fleet, skillfully creating numerical imbalance when and where they needed it. The same thing was at fault for their phenomenally fast momentum: Astral Portals allowed their armada to travel to any point in Sphere. Experience had shown us that we could handle them “on the ground” — it wasn’t easy, but it was doable.

I found our clan leaders in Eyre, in the private part of the Err’s palace. Apparently, Komtur was holding some negotiations with the local NPCs. He was accompanied by Olaf and Abel. Neither of them seemed happy to see me.

“What do you want, Cat?” Komtur asked instead of greeting me, frowning. “Did you