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

the maximum. The final portal was the so-called Great Pentagram. It had no limit on people and could transport them across thousands of leagues but required more than fifty various reagents, including epic and even legendary. Its price was exorbitant; when I calculated it, my jaw dropped. One casting cost almost a million gold! That was a pricy comfort. Portals also couldn’t be opened just anywhere—they required an artifact beacon brought by scouts to the correct spot.

From the looks of it, I wasn’t going to get any sleep that night. I logged in as my twink and started studying the subject. The Reds’ experts were also supposed to work the markets, but I still remembered two trade wars Zampotil had lost to me and didn’t hold my breath in regard to their skills.

Positions list, sales schedule, price development graph, personal information of hundreds of buyers and sellers for tracking down intermediaries—the auction could tell a lot if you knew how to read it. I singled out ten critical components of medium and large pentagrams and started systematically researching all available information. The longer I did that, the better I could see the big picture and the drearier it became. I checked my conclusions by asking a question on the Club’s channel and getting a confirmation. Some people there had made big bucks thanks to the increased demand.

In short, I didn’t have any good news for Komtur. There was no point in starting a trade war, as it had been lost about a week before. Nine-tenth of all ritual components, a half-year Bazaar supply, was bought out over two or three days, long before the Phoenix and Watchers analysts started to dig in that direction. We got beat to the punch—with plenty of time to spare. The money spent on even some of those ingredients amounted to tens of millions, and even the Bazaar market thought to be practically bottomless needed time to recover. There was only one conclusion: someone was preparing for something big.

And that someone wasn’t a clan from Dorsa or a minion of the House of Darkness. I had seen traces of their purchases, but next to that, they were insignificant. Someone else was pulling the strings of hundreds of merchants, auction representatives, resellers, and Bazaar suppliers.

Almost all ingredients, components, and reagents for portal magic were bought by players affiliated with or belonging to the Pandorum alliance. They weren’t even trying to hide, although that would have been hard, considering the scope of purchases. I checked all types of ellurite—common, red, and purified. They were also in demand, as ship fuel rose in price.

The Pandas were getting ready for war.

Chapter 19

IMPENETRABLE DARKNESS surrounded the ship, pierced only by beaming searchlights and the star of the Crown of Ice to the left of the broadside. The polished facets that looked toy like from the distance shimmered with the familiar iridescent glow. It was pretty far. Would we make it?

“Here it is, the Crown,” Thrainul said, pointing with his hand. “It will stay on the horizon for ten minutes or so. Did you want to get one last look?”

“Yep,” I said. “Where else would you see anything like that?”

For a few minutes, together with some of the crew and the Pioneers, I admired the Crown as it drifted by and then quietly approached the captain.

“How soon will we reach Ironguard?”

“We won’t go there,” Thrainul said, grinning. “There’s no point. We’ll get spotted; there are at least three Panda teams there looking for free ships. Can you guess who they’re hunting?”

“They still can’t give it a rest,” I said, sighing. “Then what will we do?”

“After a day, the Abyssal will reach the Spectral Archipelago. It’s a group of islands in the northeast. I’ve arranged a cargo barge to meet us there. Afterward...ah, you don’t need to know the details. In short, a third party will get our cargo to the Bazaar. The Pandorum lapdogs will send it upward themselves.”

“Are you sure it will work out?”

“Don’t fret. I do it all the time. Ironguard itself, its portal, and the next world are all controlled by Pandorum vassals. Their pets, basically. I’m pals with them. It’ll be OK. We’ll pack the cargo in such a way that nobody will have a clue.”

Thrainul was confident, coming off as the real deal. He wouldn’t betray me; I was a good enough judge of character to know that.

“Fine, then I’ll be off,” I warned him. “I don’t know how long I’ll stay on the ship. My job here is done. I might use a Soul Stone to leave anytime. Just in case—goodbye!”

“All right, then. Adios! And good luck, Cat.”

I went downstairs into the hold and lay down in the coffin that already felt like home, closing the lid. But instead of activating Rest, I entered the Shadow Plane.

The twilight world, grey and soundless, shrouded everything around me. I opened my archetype tab and picked Shadow Transformation, the most intriguing talent I had. Going by the description, it allowed me to change my body using summoned shadows. I wanted to try it.

The first step was Shadow Summoning. I chose a small shadow, then another, and started figuring out how it all worked. Unlike other skills, it seemed non-intuitive.

Aha! A new option appeared in the shadow control menu: use for transformation. Upon clicking, it displayed a 3D paper doll of my character covered by a slew of red dots. By trial and error, I learned that clicking a dot opened a drop-down list with lots of customization options. Say, I could grow a shadow tendril, a tail, or something akin to an arm. It was a mini-constructor kit of a shadow body with a gazillion various spare parts. Each granted a new ability, ranging from increased density to the powerful Drain Essence. There were three anchor points available, equal to the attribute points