Return failed! Transportation via Soul Stones is forbidden in this area!
That wasn’t funny at all. I knew I wouldn’t get another attempt; an alarm sounded all over Atrocity, and new guards ran into the resp room. I had managed to catch them unaware by destroying the cage with Blazing Warrior, and that got them moving, the bastards. By why wasn’t teleportation working?
Captain Panther: That was a good show, I filmed it. Give me your number, I’ll send it to you later. I’m your fan!
HotCat: I’d rather you tell me why Soul Stone isn’t working! I did destroy the statue!
Captain Panther: Huh. I said it was in the LEFT statue, which means it’s on your left when you enter the room. Which one did you break? The one on the left of you!
Crap. It was an epic fail. I couldn’t tell left from right? That was a misunderstanding to end all misunderstandings. Or he might be pulling my leg; I couldn’t rule that out. Holding back the anger that threatened to pour out of me, I sat back on the floor and fell silent for a time, trying to put my mind at rest by controlling my breath. I remembered an old joke about two monkeys, a favorite of my father’s.
Two monkeys are standing under a banana that hangs from a palm. They are trying to reach it by jumping up, but each time, they fail. Finally, one of them gets tired and says to the other one, Wait, something’s wrong here. We need to think... The second one replies, No time to think, WE NEED TO JUMP!
Basically, I was the second monkey, mindlessly jumping after the banana hung by the Pandas. I had put too much of my trust in the power of true fire, while all I really needed was to use my brain.
What did the Pandas want, really? What did they know? I tried to imagine what it looked like from outside. Some newbie gets a weird sword, a Soul Eater, that disintegrates high-level players with one hit. The Pandas need souls and a soul-eating weapon. The newbie belongs to a backwater clan that could be ignored. The Pandas don’t know that the sword is personal and don’t believe his words, so they lure the newbie to a closed resp point and try to mug him, all to get the Soul Eater. They know that the newbie’s a monkey and will keep jumping, trying to prove he’s super cool and can own everyone with his imba sword. The Pandas will prepare for that; they’ll take Black Weapons, wear demonic armor, and farm the newbie to their hearts’ content.
Time to stop being a newbie, Cat.
The best solution in this situation was to contact the admins straight away and get out of there, ignoring the Pandas’ taunts. The result of my mistake was obvious: three deaths, the loss of almost twenty thousand XP, four pieces of equipment, two hundred gold, and half-broken gear. I was such a monkey.
I looked over the dungeon, trying to memorize everything as well as I could: the resp point, full of ghosts, a spiked cage, the menacing dark armor of laughing mercs. I swore to myself that I would return, and when I did that, they would have nothing to laugh about. I didn’t know when or how, but I would be back. It was a debt I had to repay a thousand fold.
I summoned the virtual interface, found the Customer Support option, and called my personal manager. It was past 4 AM. Was she still working?
Akiru answered in thirty minutes.
I am really sorry that you’ve found yourself in such a predicament. Yes, I’ll send your ticket to customer support right now. Yes, you’ll be transported in half an hour, and your friend, too. To Eyre? All right, as you wish. Why aren’t we doing anything about this oversight? I understand your indignation. You aren’t the first. To be honest, we’re showered with complaints about Pandorum’s actions. No, we can’t. The corporation’s currently involved in legal proceedings with their lawyers, and until a decision is made, we cannot remove the respawn point from the Astral Plane.
So that’s how it was. I had seen forum messages saying that the Pandas had screwed the admins via the Gaming Law: allegedly, they weren’t violating the game’s mechanics and User Agreement. Both sides had lawyered up, there was lots of money at stake. A murky story, like it usually is when it comes to legal stuff.
At 5 AM, Panther and I finally got pulled out. I don’t know how; we woke up near the main gate of Eyre. Delighted, I breathed in the moist morning air. Thick fog swirled around mossy walls, and guards called to one another on the city towers, their voices coarse.
“What’s this place?” Panther asked in surprise. “Dorsa? Eyre? Huh. Might as well spend some time here, I guess.”
Then he turned to me.
“Do you know where I could stay?”
Chapter 5
AFTER RETURNING to Eyre, I passed out in my room, then climbed out of the capsule and crawled to bed to get some sleep. Watchers and Olaf, just you wait...
In the morning, I strolled around the empty apartment, playing a conductor while listening to Mozart on the speakers, a cup of coffee in hand. I pondered the last night’s events. So true fire wasn’t the ultimate weapon. The Panda’s weapons and armor had withstood the hits of my flaming blade, just like Tao’s black sword. Once more, I sorted out the information I had. Black Weapons, the demonic items with no durability, were legendaries rewarded for epic quests in the Netherworlds, given by the demon lords, blah blah blah... I needed to shake down the Magister; I couldn’t understand why my 3500 true fire damage couldn’t pierce through this stuff.
My musings were interrupted by an incoming call via Courier; Flame was contacting me from Sphere, asking when I would be back. That would be right now, as soon as I finished my coffee.
I hadn’t seen my friends, Valkyrie and Flame, I mean, Ivan and Maria, since the battle of Eyre, even if we did live in the same inn. Upon descending a creaky staircase, I was surprised to see Panther sitting at the same table as they. I had shown him that place only yesterday, and he had already gotten to know the other residents? That guy was fast.
“I see you’re already acquainted,” I said as I nodded to my friends, shaking the dwarf’s hand, broad as a barn door, and kissing Maria on the tattooed cheek she promptly presented.
“Not just acquainted, we’ve already completed a few quests together!” the dwarf replied in a booming voice. “After you disappeared, we had nobody to run with, and we need some reputation!”
“So, you’ve made up your mind to stay here?” I asked Panther. “Don’t you want to go back to the Astral Plane?”
“Nope. I ended up there by accident. It’s a long story.”
Captain Panther looked like an ordinary guy. He was human and wore some expensive armor under a black surcoat with a red star. His speech was grammatically correct; his words selected carefully. He seemed like a decent sort, but his pale yellow nickname marred the impression, indicating his many run-ins with the law.
“It’s hard to make it in the Netherworld with any other karma.” Panther smirked, having noticed my stare. “Whatever, it won’t be long till I get clean if I get involved with carebears.”
He gave Flame a friendly poke in the ribs.
“We’re no carebears!” the dwarf said, indignant. “We’re actually about to join the Watchers!”
“The Watchers? The local princelings? Too bad, I was going to invite you to my clan. I’m assembling a team, we’ll have blackjack and...other stuff,” Panther said and gave us a surreptitious wink.
“You mean PK?” I asked. “Watch out, the rules are strict here. You’ll be crushed in an instant.”
“Cat, that’s not my first rodeo. I have my own opinion on redistributing wealth, a moral code, so to say. I’m no Robin Hood, of course, but I won’t recruit just anyone.”
While he was talking, Captain’s glare bored a hole right through me. He was evaluating me, analyzing everything, and compartmentalizing it. At the same time, he seemed like one of the guys, a person you could pour your heart out to, someone who could make a joke when it was appropriate. He knew how to talk to people.
“What about the Pandas? Were you smelling flowers there?”
“You mean that I’m shady? As I said, it’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell it one day. Al
l right!” he said, abruptly changing the subject. “Someone recommended you to me as an expert on trade. Could you give me some pointers on where I could make a quick buck here? My pockets are as empty as a church service on a football Sunday.”
I studied them, thinking. Valkyrie and Flame had Liberty tags, I was neutral and clanless, and Captain Panther was the clan leader of Gentlemen Bastards, having just arrived from another world. From the outside, nothing connected us. Today, I would take my reward from the Watchers, the tokens and the fortress loot. Hmm, it might work out.
“We could make some money,” I said. “And I’ll need all three of you. Tell me, what do you think about acting?”
“I was the star of school plays!” Valkyrie boasted. “Why are you asking?”
* * *
“That’s true, it wasn’t our finest hour,” said Komtur, who seemed as pleased as punch. “But all’s well that ends well, thank God.”
“Actually, we started to nag Jerkhan as soon as we saw his kill,” Olaf added. “By the way, why aren’t you shown in the kill list? Is it a glitch in the statistics, or have you bought a Diamond subscription?”
“So, what about Jerkhan?” I asked, ignoring the persnickety analyst. “What did he say?”
Komtur laughed, seemingly sincere.
“What did he say? He told me to screw off,” he said, trying to hold back laughter, “and blacklisted me, too.”
“Those Pandas are real assholes.”
The fun was over as abruptly as it had started.
“We should (censored) burn them all. Destroy them. Wipe them out.”
I could get the impotent rage of the head Watcher. Still, Pandorum and the Watchers were in different orbits. Even together, the North Alliance couldn’t challenge the Pandas. Their weight classes were too different. If Pandorum wished, they could easily kick them out of their lands and burn their castles from the ground up. So all the Watchers could do was to swallow their pride...and nurse a grudge.
The faction tags I got improved my mood considerably. Judging by their number, Komtur had added some from the clan warehouse — one outpost couldn’t have produced that many. Were they trying to apologize for the Panda’s double-crossing? My ass.
Liberty’s exam was set for Saturday morning, which was two days away. Olaf implied that they wanted to arrange another raid — souls were always handy — but I ignored him. I had had enough. My promise to Komtur was fulfilled, I had helped the clan to pay the Pandas and was in no hurry to gamble against the Balance. After all, both the Magister and Yamato had warned me against it. I decided to move on to trade issues, especially since the situation allowed me to finally act.
By now, almost the entire faction tag market in Eyre belonged to me. I took a measure of pride in that — the total value of tokens I owned was around fifty thousand gold, including the tokens I had earned during the raid, which were pretty much free. I had spent almost a month promptly buying all tokens that appeared at the auction, posting messages in our area’s trade chat, encouraging clanmates and alliance members to sell looted tokens to me, and at last, it paid off.
So what were those tokens? Simple: they were tags dropped by NPCs of an opposing faction. There were four types of them, ranging from copper to platinum. The first type was dropped by common archers and swordsmen, and the last, by rank four NPCs — lords, keepers, and generals. I had only a few of them, as enemy lords were a rare get.
Their purpose was simple, too. After the start of the war, special vendors exchanging tokens for reputation or reward had appeared in Eyre. There were several types of rewards, but the best, by far, was a faction set of five items. It came in four variants: cloth, leather, chain, and plate, for any archetype, starting with a mage and ending with a tank. It looked pretty cool, had good stats, but the best thing was its “personal” property: those items couldn’t be dropped. Bound items weren’t exactly unique in Sphere, but were highly prized, which automatically increased their price. Getting such a set wasn’t a trivial task: the number of required tokens was calculated to make a solo player spend a long time assembling it.
One platinum token, the property of a lord; five gold tokens, dropped by nobles and grandees; fifty silvers, and a hundred coppers, looted from soldiers of rank one or two — and that was only one item. Simple calculations showed that obtaining it required sending more than a hundred and fifty enemy NPCs to the nearest resp point. Moreover, a lord couldn’t be defeated without assembling an entire raid; killing a noble or a grandee in single combat also wasn’t possible. So pretty much, getting a set necessitated clan assistance or trade ventures.
When I had seen the faction vendor’s stock, I had immediately devised a simple plan. I only needed two things to implement it: reputation with Eyre Nation and a whole lot of tokens. Saving Endved had given me reputation, and now I had the requisite number of tags.
The problem was, upon buying a set item, it was automatically bound to the player and couldn’t be sold, traded, or given away to others, including auctions. I suspected that it had been added to prevent peddling faction rewards. There was a simple way to circumvent that, of course.
Late that night, I opened the faction war section of the official forum and started a topic about selling ten sets of that armor. Anybody could buy it and didn’t need to farm the tokens. Limited offer. The price was five thousand — considering the current price of tokens, it was just a bit above the cost of production.
Then I went to bed.
In the morning, my topic was ten pages long, full of trolling and scamming accusations. The experts inquired how exactly I was going to transfer personal items, what was the point if the cost was the exact five thousand, and where had I managed to obtain enough tokens for ten sets in less than a month of the war. In general, the locals agreed that I was trying to cheat newbies and had no sets or tokens to speak of in the first place. Actually, they said, I was a newbie, too, as I had only been playing Sphere for two months.
Okay. I wrote another message, saying that I would transfer items by selling the requisite amount of tokens that day at 5 PM New Tokyo time on the Eyre marketplace. You give me five thousand, I give you the tokens; then you exchange them for the set you need at the NPC. To confirm my words, I added a screenshot of my inventory with lots of faction tags. The trolls, of course, would say that the image was fake, but to hell with them. My target audience would see that, and my goal was to build up hype.
As soon as I logged into Sphere, I started getting heaps of personal messages. Mostly, people were asking if I had told the truth; I said that I had and invited them to come and see. I was also contacted by Bara Norkins, one of the leaders of Sworn Brothers — the only clan of Northern Alliance to take part in the faction war. She softly chided me for not telling them about that earlier, as they would have taken everything without any hassle. I promised to sell her two sets for the declared price of five thousand in exchange for defending me during the show. The only risk was being attacked by stray PKers, considering the ton of tags I would have with me. Bara happily agreed.
At the appointed time, three or four dozen potential buyers were assembled in the marketplace. With some surprise, I saw not just local players, but even some residents from other worlds. It meant that I had done everything correctly: my offer had piqued their interest.
I sold the first five sets at the posted price, quickly giving out the tags via contracts, and the players went to castle NPC vendors, only to return dressed in their newly obtained sets. They were met with jealous looks, as there were way more buyers than sets. The emotions were running high, and players started arguing about the order of precedence, while some offered to draw lots.
“Lots? Screw that!” barked a red-haired dwarf, his beard plaited in two braids, as he elbowed his way to the front of the queue. “I didn’t come all the way here to leave empty-handed! I’ll pay six thousand for the set!”
“I had to use a Teleportation Scroll to get here!” a player in a black surcoat with a red st
ar backed him up. “Six thousand five hundred!”
“Six thousand eight hundred! “Six thousand nine hundred!”
I could barely suppress a grin before seizing control over the spontaneous auction. But was it truly spontaneous? Flame, Panther, and Valkyrie played their roles all too well, goading the crowd and egging them on.
I announced that there would be no drawing lots. I didn’t expect such an influx of buyers, so sorry guys, I’ll have to auction off the remaining five sets. Only those with the best offers would get the items, period! It’s not my fault there’s so many of you and so few tags. C’est la vie!
It was a real shit storm. Still, I stuck to my guns, the Sworn Brothers flexed their muscles in a pointed manner while glancing at those who seemed especially worked up, so it didn’t go any further. The players were indignant. Some left, but my assumption proved correct: after traveling such a long way and seeing the lucky bastards who had snatched new epic gear, the majority didn’t want to leave without buying anything...or at least without trying to haggle.
The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 9