The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (ebook reader for comics .TXT) 📗

subject of the crown, too. Olaf was sure that it could be the pebble that caused a landslide, maybe even start an all-out war between the Netherworld and the Upper Worlds. I didn’t really want to go down in history as the instigator of such a large-scale event, but my pragmatic sense suggested that the Netherworld was home to lots of unique resources, and a war was bound to create their shortage in the Upper and Grey Worlds. The person who became the first to realize that and ride the wave would definitely make a fortune. I all but licked my lips imagining the profits.

In the meantime, the end of the seemingly endless corridor finally loomed in front of us. Mysterious green light shone from the triangular exit.

Abel: The exit is clear. Guys, it’s...holy shit!

 

Abbot: What’s that?

 

Abel: Come here, take a look yourselves.

 

I was one of the first to step outside and found myself on a narrow platform that was attached to the wall of a colossal cave at a very high altitude. The cave spread out before us in all its glory, astounding in its grandeur. And below us...

Someone next to me gasped in excitement. Someone cursed. Someone whistled. And I was just staring.

Way to go, Tormis! You rock, man!

Chapter 22

THE CAVE was truly gigantic in size. Its stone ceiling vanished somewhere above, its shape fading in the hazy clouds. Warm light fell on us. The walls were decorated with columns and clusters of a strange mineral resembling translucent bone, viscous greenish-blue substance flowing inside of it, like blood through veins. Entire rivers of that thing slowly coursed toward the group of buildings in the center of the cave, as if fueling it.

The architecture was characteristic of the Ancients: a hexagon of inclined walls with no entrance, a layered pyramid in the center — a ziggurat also serving as a throne for a giant statue. The head of that colossus that sat half-turned to us was on the same level as our eyes. I estimated it to be as tall as a nine-story building.

The area behind it looked especially odd. From top to bottom, the cave was blocked by a wall made from either ice or frozen glass: an immense crystal that had a different structure inside of it, like a fly in a piece of amber. Through the murky surface, I could make out the outline of its front part — stairways, pillars...

Olaf: Effin’ A. An Ancients’ Ziggurat.

 

Abbot: Yeah. A Colossus, too.

 

Everybody burst into talking. “A stronghold,” “an ellurite deposit,” “edra” — I couldn’t understand anything. However, it was obvious that the second structure fused into the crystal by no means resembled the buildings of the Ancients. If anything, it looked like... Could it be? I opened the quest tab and checked the map. Yes! The area in front of me was glowing gold — Tormis’ legendary quest had to be completed right there. So was that the Grand Temple of Shadows that I had been commanded to liberate?

Olaf and Abbot were furiously arguing. Going by their words, the pyramid was something called a Ziggurat, one of the rarest and most desirable anomalies of Helt Akor. Thing was, it couldn’t be taken, not while it was guarded by a Colossus — that nasty-looking statue sitting on the throne. It was an automatic mechanism of the Ancients that the players didn’t yet know how to defeat. Legend said that the colossi had been built by the Ancients to battle gods, and their attacking and defensive capabilities were unsurpassed. Nothing could bring them down.

“Have you seen the videos of the Damned?” Abbot said. “They are the second in world progress on the Paths, farming Layer Thirty and beneath. Even they couldn’t take a Ziggurat.”

“There must be ways to do it. Someone does farm them,” Olaf argued. “Where else would ray guns come from? Have you seen the Colossus blueprints? Some of the components are taken from them...”

That was true, and I was inclined to agree with Olaf. Studying the Ancients’ anomalies gave the players access to technologies for building astral ships, ellurite reactors, elemental engines, outpost magic shields... Helt Akor was the only source of some of the rare artifacts; there was a good reason why Forgeworlds dromonts actively bought the Ancients’ loot, exchanging it for blueprints and reputation.

“We have Cat with the Ancient Gene. The guardians don’t aggro at him. Now that we know how activators work, he could try entering the Ziggurat.”

“If only things were that simple, everyone would be farming them,” Abbot said, doubt in his voice. “The Ancient Gene isn’t a cure-all, you know that!”

“No harm in trying!”

A narrow winding staircase led down into the cave, interspersed with several platforms. Its width allowed for only three of us to pass at once, and as we descended, we warily watched the mass of the pyramid looming in the dark. The colossus didn’t flinch as it sat with its hands lying on the armrests of its stone throne. I couldn’t quite believe that such an enormous statue could truly come alive.

The bluish-green streams of ellurite slowly rippled in the transparent pillars, pulsing inside the numerous clusters of edra. I had never seen a deposit of that rare material before. Highly poisonous in its pure state, ellurite required special tools for its extraction and processing, and only high-level miners could hope to achieve that. After being refined, it was used in almost all types of crafting: as fuel for magic reactors, as the base for powerful elixirs, as an ingredient for enchanting. Ellurite was liquid arcana, the essence of magic. It transformed the stone around it, turning it into edra — the material that absorbed magic like a sponge.

The rocky floor of the cave was covered by strange purple plants. At that point, we had to encounter our first