The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series

by Roman Prokofiev

  EACH PLAYER in Sphere could obtain an unlimited number of archetypes, but only three could be active at one time. Currently, I had Novice Warrior, Novice Trader, and Free Merchant enabled. Step by step, thanks to Secret Learning and daily practice, my main skill, Trade, upgraded, finally reaching rank six. Gaining 611 skill points out of 1000 possible in just two months was a pretty serious achievement. Upon leveling up, I unlocked almost all secondary skills and following Green’s advice, used clan funds to buy skillbooks and growth manuals for those that didn’t unlock automatically.

  Why not? It was for the greater good, after all. Clan Contracts, Marketing, Management, Human Resources, Wholesale, Consignments... Thirteen in total. Most of them required rank four or five of Trade to learn.

  It was a handy tool, boring, but necessary. Thanks to the books, I managed to increase each subskill by 150 SP right away. A skillbook produced 50 SP, while a growth manual, which provided a detailed description of each skill and methods of mastering it, gave 100 more. Green hadn’t lied. After obtaining all secondary skills and getting them to a half-decent level, I unlocked a new rare archetype: Clan Trader.

  Essentially, it was an advanced version of Novice Trader, as it significantly increased the available number of lots and contracts that I could put up by myself and allowed me to act on behalf of clan instead of just my character. Unfortunately, as I found out, switching archetypes was possible only in Rest mode and required a 12-hour cooldown. Fair enough; an ability to switch archetypes at will would have been a cheat.

  While Novice Trader was turning into the Clan one, I turned to looking for the thief.

  I wasn’t especially greedy, but nobody liked parting with their stuff for no reason, especially with gifts from old friends. That’s why I decided to attempt to retrieve the stolen Atlas while the trail was still fresh. I wrote the pickpocket.

  HotCat: Hi. Sorry for bothering you. Do you have a minute?

  Kesson: I take it you want the atlas. That’s a nifty thing.

  HotCat: Listen, don’t rub it in. How much?

  Kesson: Hehe. You’re so polite, I’m touched. When people write to me, they usually talk smack, swear to find me, rip my arms off. So just for you, I’ll put it up for auction for two thousand gold!

  I almost blew up from indignation. Full Atlas of AlexOrder was a pretty niche item that was valuable only in Dorsa. It wasn’t worth two thousand — a thousand, maybe a thousand and two hundred. The little weasel realized that I needed the Atlas and decided to make a quick buck. On the one hand, I couldn’t help but respect him, as I was the same. Kesson had immediately grasped the situation, finding a weakness and dictating his price.

  Kesson: Atlas is auctioned. It’s a limited offer valid for an hour. After that, I’ll take it off and sell it to anyone who buys it, except for you.

  Before answering, I decided to research him. I opened Kesson’s kill rating.

  He was an interesting guy, a member of DarkNet, one of Sphere’s most vicious griefers. It was more of a social club than a classic clan; many of its members had never even met one another. They called themselves Collectors of Pain. Their forum topic was swelling, full of fondly written reports on con jobs, thefts, frauds, and successful betrayals. The best thing, however, were the howls of protectors of the wronged, who dove into that evil lair, brandishing their swords. For Darksiders (that’s what DarkNet members called themselves), the coolest feat was to join some clan with a newly created character, ingratiate themselves, gain an important role...and pick the clan warehouse clean, withdrawing money from the clan accounts of those who had confided in them. Their guru was Jessica, a Sphere-renowned player who had devised and implemented dozens of similar schemes. In short, DarkNet was hated, despised, and feared.

  HotCat: All right, forget Atlas. You can sell it. Tell me, can you screw over anyone just like that?

  Kesson: Well, almost. I’m a pro!

  HotCat: Then why are you wasting your talents on trifles? You should be pilfering epics from high level players.

  Kesson: You never know who has epics.

  HotCat: Then hear me out...

  After a half-hour discussion, I took my Atlas from the storehouse — tellingly, only for five hundred gold. Well, let it be an entry fee. My real gain was a very promising new acquaintance that advanced me one tiny step closer to my plan.

  Kesson: I can’t really say. I need to talk to Jes, can’t stir the pot without her.

  HotCat: Think of the butt hurt! I’ll be in touch.

  Kesson: Ha-ha! Yeah, they’ll lose their shit! All right, I’ll write you. Peace out.

  * * *

  Two days ago

  WARNING... INITIALIZING ENTRY INTO SPHERE OF WORLDS...

  NEURAL INTERFACE HAS BEEN LOADED…

  USER ID DEFINED...

  TOTAL IMMERSION IN PROGRESS...

  The Diamond subscription that had popped up out of nowhere provided a plethora of bonuses, the most important of which wasn’t kill rating or forum anonymity, VIP packs, and a personal manager, but the ability to create a second avatar on my account. The uninitiated did speculate about it, but nobody really knew anything. As it turned out, the “one capsule — one character” rule didn’t cover the Diamonds. Truly, money ruled the world. Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

  I twiddled with the settings of my second avatar. With my current subscription, I had everything unlocked from the get-go: all worlds, all races, all appearance options. The goal was to create the perfect assistant who wouldn’t get linked to the good old Cat in a million years.

  I scrolled through the race list, then again. The mind boggled at some of the creatures there, from basic humans, elves, and dwarves of all kinds and variations to centaurs, minotaurs, and ogres. I found the snake people — they had some pretty nifty perks — and the fairies. And what’s that? Whoa!

  Again and again, I re-read the descriptions of racial abilities, feeling myself break into a Cheshire cat grin. At last, I found just what I needed!

  * * *

  The Bazaar, the Seventeenth Tower, VIP apartment

  As soon as I created my alt, I started a topic on the official forum in the Alchemy section, Russian-speaking version. There, I posted a screenshot of my Tincture of Fire and a question from a newbie, saying I had asked what that was and if I should bother myself studying Alchemy for that potion. Help me ppl!

  I had also written that the recipe was a starting reward in some questline without mentioning what NPC faction handed them out, which was, essentially, the truth. Afterward, I hadn’t opened that topic, to maintain the experimental integrity.

  Upon my return to the forums, I saw that the local residents had been quite predictable in their response. The majority decided that the recipe was fake. Some were trying to find out what faction that was and where it was based, and the smartest ones wrote that it was a stupid attempt to jack up the ingredient prices. I drew up a sales graph of all the components of my recipe. It showed that their price and the sales volume had increased, but negligibly, only by one to three percent. Unfortunately, controlling any of them required huge investments, half a million at least, or better, a million: after all, clever dealers always kept part of their stock in reserve, kept in clan warehouses and their own. I didn’t have even a tenth of the minimum starting capital, so I had to make do.

  I posted an incensed message that I was as pure as driven snow and as proof, put the first thirty potions up for auction, saying that I had sent them to the Bazaar via a broker.

  In the meantime, I started to actively reduce the price of Dragon Blood, a rare and expensive item that was the key ingredient of the epic elixirs given by the Order as a reward. That’s how I did it: I flooded the auction with scores of small batches of blood, making large-scale traders fall down in the list. My lots were bought, and I put up new ones, buying and selling at the same time. My goal was to cut off the blood dealers’ market for a few days, making them drop the price. After calculating daily sales volume of that component, I d
ecided that I had enough money for two days’ fight.

  I dedicated the entire day and half the night to that exciting enterprise. The price slowly dropped down, but most sellers of Dragon Blood seemed unwavering: they didn’t drop the price in spite of all my fussing. Either they had lots of other stuff to sell, or they were as nervous as brick walls.

  Whatever. Sooner or later, I would wear them down. I put up the Tincture’s recipe on the auction for a day, selecting the highest possible price, and posted on the forum that I decided to stop brewing elixirs, as it was too much hassle, and sell the recipe for good. Then I went to bed.

  My plan was simple. I had information about a new set of rewards, the screenshots of recipes I had made back in the Magister’s citadel upon getting the Tincture of Fire. It was highly unlikely that anyone else had made it to the inner circle of the Order’s stronghold, making my knowledge unique, and I was going to milk it for all it was worth.

  The pinnacle of the Order’s quest rewards were three epic-grade elixirs and one called Great. Undoubtedly, it was the best option when it came to fire resistance. The players farming fire mobs and the residents of Netherworld, where every other creature had a fiery aura, would love such potions. All those recipes, however, had one thing in common: making them required Dragon Blood.

  I wanted to drive down its price, buy out as much of it as possible, creating a market shortage, and then throw in insider information about new elixirs, causing a sharp surge in demand for their ingredients. As I would possess the most important one, Dragon Blood, I would be able to dictate the price and get as much as I could. There was a problem, of course. Lots of players would go to Dorsa to check if the recipes were real and start working for the Order to earn reputation. I didn’t think the Magister would be thankful for such an invasion.

  The Magister... In the rare moments I logged out of Sphere, I continued gathering information about his mission, finding Svechkin in the world of Dagorrath in Netherworlds. Alas, everything was harder than I had thought. The Magister’s former protégé had chosen his sanctuary correctly.... Or had somebody else chosen it for him?

  In short, it was a closed world, something like a prison. Only a few of them existed in Sphere. Some had been closed due to unusual results of procedural generation, while others had been forbidden from visiting from the very beginning. Dagorrath was one of the latter.

  There was a section dedicated to it on the forum. Players’ descriptions and comments contradicted each other. Some were excited, some seemed nauseous, and some were wondering how anyone could like such disgusting things. The locals had given their world a choice nickname, calling it The Hole. As I understood, it was a horror world resembling the most crazy fantasies of H. P. Lovecraft. It was a huge underground ocean — most locations were underwater. There was no sun, no day-night cycle, and no seasons, and it was swept in an eternal darkness. Terrifying creatures that had never seen light crawled in the depths of its black sea, while players visited those place to get a thrill, plus some good loot, of course.

  There were no Teleportation Scrolls to that place. There were only two ways to get there. The easiest was to use an ordinary interworld portal in one of Netherworlds. I created a route — twenty-two worlds, nothing impossible, but the last three “switch points” were in the Dark Worlds under the control of the Pandas and their proponents. Something told me we wouldn’t be able to pass through. I was going to try, anyway.

  There was also another way: go through the Endless Paths that bound all worlds together in a vast web, find a crossing point in one of Helt Akor’s unstable instances, and sail down Styx. Quite an adventure, especially for a newbie with a flaming sword.

  Unfortunately, getting into Helt Akor and surviving the infamous Paths was a challenge in itself. Entire raids were assembled to enter there, and even now, only forty percent of that place was explored. Luckily, the Watchers had a three-month ticket into that “Sovereign Dungeon”, the entrance to which was right under the Weeping Devil, the castle belonging to PROJECT HELL. I knew that they periodically raided the Paths, as clan and alliance chats were full of announcements. I didn’t know how deep the Watchers went into Helt Akor, but I was planning on researching that question after finishing with the recipe affair. But first, I had to do some trading!

  At 11 AM, I logged back in and continued my dreary routine of tapping auction buttons. A few Dragon Blood traders had shaved off their price overnight, and I bought their lots out, but most of it, around five hundred thousand worth, was still up for sale for an absolutely inappropriate cost. Moreover, someone had noticed the growing buzz around the item and brought in even more blood, selling it cheaper than I did.

  I needed money for the final stage of Operation Recipe; a lot of money, or everything would be ruined. I realized I needed to take risks.

  I could invest real money, but that was unwise, considering the ten percent admin fee, which made large transaction cost a lot. Fidgeting, I crossed the room a few times, then finally left the apartment and went toward the elevator.

  Golden Hamster Bank occupied an entire floor. Despite the funny logo, it was the biggest and the most powerful organization in Sphere that had branches in all worlds and at each auction. For a fee, they could store valuables, deposit money to a bill account, exchange in-game currency into real money, and also give out loans — which was right what I needed.

  Despite the decor, everything was quite serious, as the bank belonged to the game administration. It was intended to regulate the cost of in-game currency, acting as the only issuer of gold coins, the universal currency of Sphere. Golden Hamster controlled the rate of exchange and watched the total amount of money in the game.

  After listening to my requests, the NPCs sent me to an expert, who was a player — or rather an employee of the corporation — in charge of such issues. He spent a few minutes studying something, probably my history of financial transactions, the cash flow, determining my solvency. Finally, he announced his decision: a security deposit of one hundred thousand with maximum leverage of five hundred thousand, meaning that a hundred thousand gold on my in-game account would be frozen, forbidding me from exchanging it for real money. In return, the Golden Hamster would allow me to use half a million of their funds. Not for free, of course: I would have to pay half a percentage point for each transaction, plus a monthly fee. Those were some crazy terms. Before signing the virtual contract, I asked the main question.

  “If you lose more than the deposit amount while trading, you will be in the red,” the smiling manager explained. “You could repay your debt with either real or in-game money. If you don’t repay, the Golden Hamster will seek compensation through the courts, following the User Agreement.”

  So that’s how it was. If I went deep into debt and, say, deleted my account, sooner or later, I would still be visited by enforcement officers. I shivered. I certainly wanted to avoid such an outcome.

  No. I closed the contract window, my hand firm. It was an interesting offer, but I wasn’t about to risk spending borrowed money, the sum of which exceeded my assets several times over. It was too dangerous, and I still didn’t know the Bazaar and its pitfalls well enough.

  “Your offer has been created and will be valid for a month,” said the manager, having clearly lost his interest in me. “At any moment, you may contact — “

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in that credit line,” I replied. “At least, for now. Maybe in the future... May I take a plain loan? Say, for fifty thousand?”

  After stalling me for half an hour, they gave me the fifty thousand, for a month and with twenty percent interest, which was a lot, but I didn’t have any other options. Repeated exchange of real-life money would have cost me even more.

  Upon returning to my apartment, I bought out all the remaining minor lots that impeded my operation, spending about forty thousand gold. At that moment, I had 410 gallons of Dragon Blood on my hands. The market price was about 250 gold per gallon, but the main bulk, about
fifteen hundred gallons, were in the 290-410 range, and I couldn’t drive them down lower than that.

  I needed to make a decision. However, I also had to remember that scores — if not hundreds — of people as resolved as me were playing against me, many of them smarter and more experienced than me. Some of them were bound to monitor the strange activity of that auction lot, and some definitely had cards up their sleeves. The situation required a more delicate approach.

  Once again, I turned to the main tool of my endeavor — the official forum. I opened the same topic, which was now full of people making fun of the hapless alchemist, and wrote that I decided to give up on that business for good and wanted to sell the other recipes of that line-up, especially since I didn’t have enough skill points for creating epic elixirs. I asked for advice on the possible prices, also adding a few screenshots.

  After that, I logged back in and started watching the market. The buzz around Dragon Blood would show if my plan panned out. Would the alchemy masters believe that a newbie stupid enough to expose a potentially profitable venture on the forums could get an epic recipe?