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

charts, of course, but it still falls within the scope of the Agreement. Actually, I’d like to thank you for such an interesting event! Things like this only serve to make the game more popular.”

I didn’t say anything. Whatever he might say, there must have been a reason for his visit. He was bluffing. If everything were fine, we wouldn’t be talking.

“Akiru passed along your request. I must say, it sounds a lot like blackmail.”

“More like an ultimatum. But if you don’t care, we can continue.”

“Oleg, honestly, I don’t believe you can stop Black Friday. We’ve conducted a small investigation. NAVY will soon run out of resources, and everything will stop no matter what. You’re not the driving force behind this initiative, although you’re definitely complicit.”

“That sounds like a no,” I said with a smirk.

“Don’t get me wrong; your request was misguided. Agasyan is just an investor. He doesn’t care about the game. There’s no point in talking to him; most likely, you’ll get redirected to me. Therefore, if you have a problem, we can discuss it right here. I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

For a few seconds, I hesitated. Yamato was studying me, and vice versa. There was something about him I didn’t like. I couldn’t narrow down the logical reason, but my gut kept screaming alarm. I shouldn’t be opening up to that person.

“I have nothing to tell you,” I finally said.

“Too bad. Then I’ll speak for you, all right?” Yoshito said with a smile. “You and I spoke once about your sword. An internal investigation showed that you got an extremely powerful item secretly added to the game by the former developer team. Most likely, it happened by accident. Am I right?”

It was a dangerous conversation; we were on thin ice. I didn’t comment, staring out the window, while Yamato paced around the room.

“There are several items like this, most likely, seven. Seven Brothers. We assume that they exist to fix the Balance via in-game methods, like secret keys of sorts, right? Three of the seven have already been found and activated, but we can’t track down two of them — they belong to NPCs inside anomalous zones.”

“Anomalous zones?” I asked.

“Yes. Aren’t you reading the news? A few days ago, we issued a special press release and amended the User Agreement. You signed it when logging into Sphere — you couldn’t miss it.”

“I guess I didn’t pay it any attention.”

“In short, it’s something like a glitch in the procedural generation. Sphere creates dangerous zones, locations, and sublocations that we cannot control. All of this has something to do with your items and the Law of Balance and threatens normal gameplay. I am absolutely sure that you, Oleg, have something to do with these strange events and want to tell that to Agasyan. Is my guess correct? There’s no point to that — I’ll be the one to deal with this issue, anyway. Do you understand?”

“No, you’re wrong,” I said, shaking my head.

“I’m not,” Yamato said, confident. “Oleg, this is a serious matter. Seven keys are hardwired into the game and attached to their owners. We can’t remove your character and those items. But you’re now a hostage of the game. I can help you if you help me.”

“This isn’t why I want to talk to your boss,” I replied. “What if I have a commercial offer for several billion?”

Yamato frowned. Apparently, for him, I had just become one of those clowns who dreamed of suggesting their genius idea to an oligarch. Let him. Maybe he would leave me alone. He was too sharp as he was, digging too deep. I felt a bit concerned — new variables kept springing up in the game, new pieces appearing on the chessboard. Calculating probabilities became harder and harder, and the stakes rose.

“Listen, Yamato-san,” I said, deciding to test the waters. “Let’s be blunt. Level with me, and I won’t beat about the bush, either. So I got this sword, yes. I’m just trying to keep my head above water and make money. Everything’s super confusing. What do you want from me? How can I help, really?”

“I need information about the items you’re looking for. It will be better for everyone if we are the ones to deal with them.”

“But I don’t have any information. You already know everything I have. I have the quest for assembling the Seven given out by the Magister of the Order. Ask around, there or somewhere else.”

“Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, that’s impossible!” Yamato hissed. “Both the Magister and the valkyries, who so kindly granted you their amulets, are inside anomalies. Those sublocations are really strange, by the way. I suspect you were only allowed inside thanks to your sword.”

I casually shrugged, which only served to infuriate the Japanese. His face turned impenetrable as if he put on an icy mask. There was something familiar in that expression as if I had seen it before. But where?

“There’s another way you could help us,” he said coldly. “It shouldn’t be made public, but there’s a theory that your sword and its siblings were created to battle the anomalies generated by the procedural AI. In fact, its features hint at that — it’s a weapon of mass destruction. We’d like to perform a small experiment. If you cooperate, I might be persuaded to entertain your request.”

“So you can arrange a meeting. You just don’t want to,” I said, chuckling. “An experiment, you say? What does it involve?”

“Nothing special, really. We want to use one of the abilities your sword possesses — in particular, the Soul Eater. You are to find one malicious character and release them in a specific place. To the best of my knowledge, you’ve already done that with Ananizarte.”

“Um, nope, I’m not playing this game!” I replied without hesitation. “It’s an odd request,