“Rian! Hail to you, friend!”
“Laort! High time that we met again!”
“Where are you traveling from?”
“The Old Crossroads, and as far as Davna! It’s the Err’s order. We got a pigeon three days ago!”
“Yes, the war has started…."
Another group of riders followed the foot soldiers. It was dark, and everything blended together in the dim torchlight, but even above the heads of the players and NPCs, waiting for their turn to enter the gate, I could see the huge spear-carrying stallions clad in equestrian chainmail cloth, richly decorated with embroidery. That was a squad of knights and armigers, all armed to the teeth with lances, flambergs, and morningstars. Kite shields adorned with heraldic flowers and crossbows were attached to the saddles.
“It’s the Order!” said Svenn, who was right next to me. “They’ve come from the south, from the border with the Steppe! It’s the first time I’ve seen our knightly brothers!”
“What are they doing here?” Balian grunted. “Those paladins are from a completely different faction...”
The Order! Was this the Order of the Sword that the wizard told me about? He had mentioned that they knew the most about the Seven Brothers and their weapons. I attempted to elbow my way closer to them, but the guards, standing in two columns and bristling with spears, were not letting anybody through, and the tail of the procession had already disappeared under the arch of the High Gate.
Oh, and talking of my sword... After identifying it (although to other players, only question marks instead of stats were visible), I talked to Alex and received a letter from the admins, prompting me to put it aside into the far corner of my inventory. To hell with it; the risk of penalty was too high, and I had just started getting my financial operations off the ground. The Liberty leaders urged me to avoid using the cheat sword in clan raids, after all, the admins had removed all the loot we had gotten from Snow’s body.
Somebody pushed me in the back. The guards had finally lifted the cordon, and a stream of players and NPCs began pouring into the city. I headed to the tavern, went upstairs to my room, and finally dropped off to sleep.
CHAPTER 17 ETERNAL WARRIOR
A loan payment, confirmed by an electronic signature, got deducted from my card account. I sighed and took a long vacant look at the screen. My money was running out. As it turned out, I needed around three thousand terro a month to support my usual lifestyle, just routine expenses before anything out of the ordinary, or a major purchase. The biggest problem, of course, was the loan—one thousand and eight hundred terro. Back when I was playing COSMOS, I had not lost any sleep over it, as I had earned enough from the game for me to spend money without having to think. But now...
I had been playing Sphere for more than a month. The game was awesome, and I saw lots of money-making potential. Yet the specific nature of trade inside Sphere meant either having to spend a lot of time there, or handling really large sums. Maybe even both. In short, I needed significant initial capital. By my estimates, to control the portion of the market that interested me, I had to invest around ten to fifteen thousand terro in the game.
I needed access to the Watchers’ resources. After that, I could start pulling off more lucrative transactions than my con back at Fairs. Buying and selling items and ingredients via clan requests ought to make a tidy profit, too.
Soon enough, it was time for Liberty recruits to sit the exam that would allow them to get into the main clan lineup...or not. They had not told us much about the exam, but going on the few details that were available, I surmised that things were not looking good. To be honest, I was lagging behind. More often than not, I simply didn’t have enough points in basic skills to get the necessary result. I was pretty average in Fencing, Throwing, and Unarmed, but when it came to Mounted Combat and Archery, I totally sucked. I had a glimmer of hope that my financial talents would get me a pass in the exams, but knowing our trainers, that was going to be a long shot. No, every Watcher had to be a pro fighter—that was the motto our trainers hammered into our heads at every practice session. We were warriors, not farmers.
And so, just the thought of the upcoming exam made me weak at the knees. I was also worried about the star metal sword that lay in the chest at the tavern, lonely and abandoned. After admin’s letter, I had no idea what to do with it. Using it was risky, and I might get punished. Not using it was disappointing, as it made all our efforts pointless. I could not sell it, as personal items could not be traded. Still, the item was super interesting, going by the properties that had so far been revealed. It was probably tied to some major quest, and I was surprised the admins considered it a bug. I had a strong suspicion that all the jazz with the faction war against Eyre was caused by the the identification of the sword’s stats.
The mage had babbled that the paladins of the Order of the Lily on the Sword, or something like that, knew about the weapons of the Seven. I tried looking up info about the Order and discovered that it was a small insular NPC faction that lived far to the south, beyond the confluence of the rivers, at the edge of Savage Field. It was impossible to get there by buying portal tokens, so the only way into the Order was by foot. Alas, I had no time to travel; all my days were spent training and trying to keep my pants on at the auction, for example, when I finally got round to selling the loot from the Tombs of the Necromancers.
I had been itching to get rid of Fokial’s wand and collar for some time. They were rare-quality items with good properties with only one drawback: they required lots of SPs in Necromancy, a pretty uncommon skill in our hinterlands. Well, players who dabbled in that particular magic school did visit Eyre from time to time, but didn’t stay long, connected for some reason to the Gods of Light revered in Eyre.
First, I analyzed the items. Currently, there were no similar items for sale on the market. At first, I rejoiced at the lack of competition, but trade history revealed the whole truth. Similar items had been up for sale at Dorsa’s auctions before. The usual price had been around two hundred gold coins, and they had remained unsold for a long time, from a week to several months. What did that tell me? Exactly—that the items were not in demand. Most likely, practitioners of Necromancy already knew where to get them, or, more likely, already owned less fancy equivalents of the same kind of equipment.
To ease my consciousness, I visited various specialized websites and studied how popular items with the “Requires skill: Necromancy” indicator were on Bazaar, the biggest trade hub in Sphere. Stuff like this was not rare, and was bought and sold all the time. The average price was about a hundred and fifty gold. I gave the question some thought.
Apparently, Bazaar had a practically bottomless market. Analysts joked that its purchasing power was infinite. In all seriousness, around twenty thousand players constantly used it for trading, and its daily turnover was estimated in tens of millions of terro, which was comparable to Eurasia’s biggest stock exchange in New Tokyo. I want to be there! It hit me. But so far, even Golden Fairs, Dorsa’s major hub, was closed to me, let alone inter-world markets. And then, the funds Bazaar required were of a different order of magnitude.
To conclude, I was limited to the auction of Eyre and had two unpopular items on my hands. Well, listen up kids: today, Uncle Cat is going to show you another trading trick from his arsenal.
My target audience was simple: necromancers or resellers. Necromancers, as I could see from the sale history, bought similar items, once a month, which meant that they were out. The only option left were greedy narrow-minded resellers, who could be found on every marketplace.
I used a method that always worked in games where auction was based on buying and selling lots. It wasn’t that far from a scam, but I was never really worried about convention. To pull it off, I needed a second account, an alt, which was impossible in Sphere, where each capsule was limited to one character, so I had to use the auctioneer. It was all very simple. I created a lot selling the collar for fifteen hundred gold, and
the wand for eighteen hundred. These numbers were unreasonable, ten times as high as the average market price.
After waiting for half an hour, I created a lot buying the items for twenty-five hundred gold. Was that dumb? Absolutely. But it worked! What would a reseller see, when they looked at these lots? Two items that could be resold for a thousand gold more. The conclusion was automatic: buy it and sell it on to potential buyers, and earn a thousand gold. What a tempting prospect!
The main thing was to use different nicknames, or even the greediest of resellers would realize that it was a scam. A smart experienced merchant would always be suspicious of such things, knowing that money didn’t fall from the sky or grow on trees. Still, as my record showed, there were enough other people, dumber and greedier than that.
The only problem with this trick was that you had to wait and watch out for the moment when your lot sold. I had spent three hours at Eyre auction, when first, and then the second lot blinked and disappeared, and a sweet chime informed me that more than three thousand gold had appeared in my account. Then, I had around ten seconds, before the buyer selected the items in the auction menu, marked my buying lot, and clicked “Sell”.
Keeping my finger on the pulse, I ordered the auctioneer to remove both buying lots. They vanished, leaving the hapless reseller with the necromancer’s wand and collar; let him figure out how to deal with them. I smirked and headed out of the auction house. A minute later, someone nicknamed Zerg PM’d me.
Zerg: Hey bro! I just bought something of yours at the auction by mistake...
I blacklisted Zerg. You reap what you sow, err, sell what you buy. Or maybe he’d start leveling up Necromancy and wear them himself. Easy money didn’t exist, end of story.
So that was my simple scheme. My auction warehouse also contained the scrolls copied by Alex from Fokial’s Spellbook and some other rubbish—ingredients looted in the dungeon, cursed items, phylactery fragments. Their time had not come yet, as I once again ran out of lots for passive buying and selling. The truth is, I had a plan.
When war came to Eyre, I sensed an opportunity. The quests given out by faction NPCs were rewarded with pretty good items up to epic sets. But they were not handed out for free. They were exchanged for a certain amount of tokens dropped by enemy soldiers. For instance, to get epic greaves, you had to bring a hundred first rank tokens, thirty second rank tokens, three third rank tokens, and one fourth rank token. And level four, by the way, meant a lord that required a raid to defeat. Anyway, I put it to the auctioneer to buy as many of those tokens as possible for next to nothing: from one silver to one gold.
It was a long-range plan, as the war had only just started, but players were already farming the tokens in battles against enemy NPCs. I knew that there were impatient guys, who sold all their loot at auction without even thinking about it. With their help, among other things, I was hoping to collect lots of faction tokens of different ranks. And then...
Still, that was still a ways off. Little by little, a trickle of tokens was falling into my auction warehouse, and I hoped that, when the battles grew in scale, that trickle would turn into a flowing river.
* * *
Location: Weeping Devil, PROJECT HELL Castle
“Everybody here?” Tao looked over his clanmates. “Have all constant party leaders arrived? Mirgus, go on.”
They were sitting and standing next to a square table with a huge map of Dorsa spread out across it. The first rays of light found their way through the transparent stained glass windows, as the quiet morning commenced. The edges of the colorful map were weighed down with cups and candlesticks, so it wouldn’t roll up, and brass toy soldiers marched across the elaborately drawn continents and valleys.
“As you can see, the geographical location of Eyre makes it easy to defend,” Mirgus said, as he cast off his hood and circled an area on the map with his finger. “It’s on the fertile plain between Aldo and Sinda, and the northern border is protected by a natural barrier, the mountains of Northern Crest. In the south, from where the rivers converge, Eyre is shielded by forests and impassable marshes, the so-called Woodland Sea. The west is open to invasion, but secure—the wild lands of the coast are held by clans loyal to the North Alliance.”
“And in the North, they have the Watchers!” snorted Svoy, a tall slender elf, whose handsome face was scarred by a perpetual arrogant grimace.
“Spot on! The wild lands to the north behind the mountains are held by the Watchers, and that’s where their main castle, Condor, is located. Evidently, attacking Eyre from the north is pointless.”
“What troops do we have, by the way?” Tao asked. “What did the House of Darkness give us?”
“The Fifth and the Sixteenth Hordes are battle-ready. Soon, they will march out of Irth Garth. Two thousand riders from Hayvin are coming to meet them.”
“The Fifth Horde, ‘The Black Devils’...” Tao muttered. “What about the Sixteenth? And why just them?”
“The Sixteenth is a siege horde. They have heavy infantry, crossbowmen, siege equipment, ballistae. They are trained to assault fortified castles. As for our numbers... The House of Darkness is engaged in three wars right now. The bulk of their forces are colonizing Ketel and subduing Arkedon, and that’s where the troops of our main allies, the Kingdom of Dan-na-Hayvin are occupied.”
The silence was broken by a frail dark-haired girl, who dangled her legs while sitting on the window-sill. She looked like a typical Japanese schoolgirl from a manga—black pigtails, naive expression, and a ditsy short skirt. The only inconsistency with that image were the long silver nails on her right hand, which she used to absent-mindedly tap the stained glass.
“We’ve taken the pawns provided by the Lady from Irth Garth and built an outpost near the Woodland Sea. A dozen of ours are on constant watch there. We’re sending NPC veterans from Dan-na-Hayvin by birdies, but it’s a long process — ten soldiers a day, at most.”
“I know, Tentacle, I know. Well done. Mirgus, when will the Fifth and the Sixteenth arrive at Eyre’s borders and start fighting?” Mirgus lingered and grudgingly took one of the toy solders on the map, moving it a few squares away.
“NPC troops can’t use enemy teleporters. By my calculations, their journey will take four to five months. Eyre is four thousand leagues a from Hayvin!”
“What about our portal masters? Can we move them through a pentagram?”
“Theoretically, yes. We could try opening a Great Portal. A thousand could pass through it, but the ritual requires ingredients that don’t exist in our world. We could get them on Bazaar, but the cost would be...exorbitant. Millions of gold... Is it worth it?”
“You’re right, it’s not,” Tao admitted. “All right. What about other NPC allies?”
“I contacted the thanes of Ergial. Unfortunately, coordination with them is complicated. We don’t have any reputation with them, and seamen are a proud people. We only managed to find out that they would want to disembark their drakkars on the northern and the western coasts.”
“That’s dumb. The north is dominated by the Watchers and the Im Enoi,” Tao remarked. “And they can’t fight their way to the west of Okaem. Those seas are under the control of Asgaard and Blood Eagles, who are hostile to them. They won’t be able to lead a big fleet past the Sea of Winds!”
“I think so too. I’ll try finding a player with Ergial reputation, try acting through them.”
“So of the NPC kingdoms, we only have Dyre and Daigor?”
“That’s right. They’re Eyre’s neighbors, so they’ve already joined the war. According to my data, the Err of the Eyre Nation is gathering troops under his capital. When the forces from all the provinces arrive, they’ll march along the Old Road in the direction of Dyre.”
“Battle forecast?”
“Sadly, even the combined military might of Dyre and Daigor cannot stand against Eyre. They’ll be crushed. The Free City of Dyre will probably be occupied, and the Principality of Daigor will be next.”
>
“Enough about NPCs. What about the players?”
“Almost a thousand players have joined the faction war, roughly equal numbers on both sides. Mostly solo players or small clans. When it comes to organized entities, It’s worth mentioning the Sworn Brothers and the Watchers’ academy on their side, and as for ours, the Legion alliance and...well, us.”
“Has Legion joined the war? Have you contacted them?”
“I tried to. Unfortunately, after that incident, they don’t want to have anything to do with us. Baghir, their leader, was even more blunt: he told me to go screw myself.”
“Hahaha! Peacemaker’s party gave them a good ass-kicking back then!” Svoy burst out laughing. “They’re still butt-hurt!”
“I get it. Are any other significant clans planning on taking part in the war?”
“Hard to tell. The strongest player in Eyre is the Northern Alliance. They have lots of carebears, of course, but not enough PvP players, either. I think that if Eyre starts losing, they’ll join the war. A few core players from the Watchers have been spotted fighting the war as part of Liberty, their academy. That’s the kill list. They’ve already engaged our guys on the border.”
“I saw. As for winning the war, am I correct in thinking that you estimate the timescale to be six months?”
“That’s the most optimistic prediction. Eyre’s a tough nut to crack. Dealing with them won’t be quick.” Tao glared at his chief of staff. Then, with an abrupt movement, he swept all the carefully arranged figurines off the map.
“No. That’s far too long! It’s unacceptable. We must crush Eyre faster than that! There is a way...and I’m willing to try it. We have a secret weapon, and they have no idea it exists!”
“What kind of weapon?” Mirgus asked, skeptical. Tao, the leader and creator of PROJECT HELL, stretched his back. Impatiently, he tossed back the white strands of hair falling on his handsome delicate face, then cheerfully blinked at Mirgus with his only visible eye, crystal blue in color (the other was hidden behind a black leather eyepatch).
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