Shadow Seer
by Roman Prokofiev
Rogue Merchant
Book #3
Magic Dome Books
Rogue Merchant
Book #3: Shadow Seer
Copyright © Roman Prokofiev 2021
Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2021
English translation copyright © Sofia Shcherbakova 2021
Published by Magic Dome Books, 2021
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-80-7619-230-0
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the shop and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.
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Table of Contents:
Chapter 1
Interlude: Project Hell
Chapter 2
Interlude: Pandorum
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Interlude: The House of Darkness
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Interlude: The Event
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Interlude: The Watchers
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Interlude: The Watchers
Chapter 18
Interlude: The Bazaar
Chapter 19
Interlude: Project Hell
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About Roman Prokofiev
Chapter 1
Release all absorbed souls?
I TOOK A DEEP SIGH, trying to calm my heartbeat. By chance, I was going to light a fire that would be hard to quench. Let the cowards fear the fallout!
Yes.
A whirlwind of shadows burst out of my blade like a trail of translucent ink and spun across the hall, absorbed by the magic of the artifact cage. Behind its bars, shadows split, fusing into separate shapes that rapidly became flesh. After all, a full day had already passed, and NPCs could immediately respawn inside the circle. The Pandas stared at the cage, transfixed, as a cadre of succubi raged there, recoiling in horror from a lone female silhouette with a terrifying title above her head: Ananizarte, the Goddess of Darkness. The goddess was clearly in a mood. A glowing aura flickered around her, and her eyes flashed with furious scarlet flames.
“Nothing personal! It’s just the Pandas contracted me to kill a god,” I told Ananizarte. Her ardent gaze fixed on me, she slowly spread her hands, and the cage exploded into a myriad of tiny fragments that swooshed through the air.
The time had come. It was easy to die right there, in the center of her divine fury, but my plans didn’t include a death like that. I activated Shadow Run and vanished from sight, traveling into the Shadow Plane. The hall transformed before my eyes as if I were looking through a filter. A thick crust of bones crunched beneath my feet, and lesser shadows shrunk back from me in fear. How many people had the Pandas killed in that place, really?
But I didn’t have time to examine them. Three steps, only three steps! I used the fact that Jerkhan was still staring at Ananizarte while using his shield to deflect the shards flying at him and approached him from behind.
Then I left the Shadow Plane. Two blows, quick as lightning. The first cut the chain between the ogre and Weldy. I pushed the girl aside with my free hand, away from the madness in the center of the hall. My second hand drove my blade into the opening between Jerkhan’s helmet and a black spiked pauldron, right into the muscles of his ripped neck. Take that, scum!
Somehow, the ogre managed to react in time. He darted back, making Aelmaris pass an inch short of his body. His retaliation was immediate, and a blow of his black axe broke through my attempt to parry, knocking me back to the wall. Ironically, his timing was fortunate, as a tendril of the dark crimson whirlwind fell right into the spot where we had fought, scooping up the screaming ogre, crucifying him, and enveloping him in flames. Scathing fire breathed in my face, singeing my eyebrows and eyelashes and applying a fire-based DOT.
Despite not seeing a thing, I found Weldy and hurriedly activated the Greater Shield of Shadows, my surprise number two. Once, a scroll with that spell had saved Alex and me in the thick of a PROJECT raid. Ten minutes or ten million hit points of damage seemed too much to be overcome right off the bat, even by a goddess...at least I hoped so.
Something unthinkable was happening in the center of the hall where the cage used to stand. It was completely covered in a swirling pillar of fire and darkness with rapidly growing tendrils. The Pandas spun around it together with other debris, as if caught in a tornado. Despite their demonic armor, their health bars dwindled away at the speed of light. The succubi, fifty of which had been trapped in the sword, were trying to flee, screaming in terror. A stream of winged demonesses rushed toward the only exit, knocking down the arriving Pandorum warriors.
The floor kept wobbling, and the sounds of alarm reverberated across the Atrocity. Lots of Pandas were about to arrive; we had to go, pronto! I put my palms on Weldy’s face. She stared at me with an empty, apathetic expression, a fresh scar on her forehead. Her neck was bruised and bloodstained around the spiked collar. I pulled at it as hard as I could, trying to break the enchanted band and failing.
All right! Trying to keep cool, I slowly pulled away the edge of the collar and touched it with the tip of Aelmaris. Bang! The collar snapped open, breaking into two pieces. Its durability was zero; it was destroyed. Weldy tossed her head, ran her hand over her face, as if removing a film, and looked up.
“HotCat! You’ve come!” She threw her hands around me, crying. Her tears, her trembling lips—none of that mattered as long as her eyes radiated life once again. I looked into them and crashed down, pulling her with me. I was saved only by the reflexes drummed into me while training with Liberty, luck, and the reflection of coming death in Weldy’s dilated pupils.
The scimitar that was supposed to behead us split the air instead, fanning us with a cold whiff. Somehow, Roahildorn had managed to get inside the shield with us and decided to attack. How had I missed her?
“Not so fast, Kitty!” the Steel Guard mercenary said, grinning. “Nobody’s dismissed you yet!”
I got on my feet and aimed my blade at her, preparing to strike her down with Fiery Lightning, but I quickly changed my mind. That was risky. Roa’s armor was glowing with magic. Maybe that was how she had reflected my lightning bolt back in the tavern.
We came together, and she had to race against the clock while dodging the blows of Aelmaris inside a small patch of land surrounded by a dome. Still, I didn’t land even one blow while she rewarded me with a painful jab in the shoulder. A quarter of health in the red, a trauma, bleeding... That’s what I got for missing an attack.
“Not bad, Kitty,” Roa dropped while swinging her weapon. “But that’s as f
ar as it goes.”
She switched from defense to attack, trying to misdirect me with a series of feints that would force me to make a mistake and ultimately kill me. Roahildorn was definitely one of the top blade masters I had met. Still, even she couldn’t consider every circumstance. A chain slashed against her speedy blade, arresting its movements and wrapping around its hilt. Weldy! Out of the blue, she appeared right next to me, springing into action. You go, girl! Cursing, Roa abruptly wrested the chain from her hands, but the timing was already lost. I lunged at her, driving my sword right through her quivering body, and Roahildorn vanished in a flash of light, leaving only a pile of grey ashes.
“Good thinking!” I grabbed Weldy, who was breathing heavily, and pulled her along. “We need to get out of here!”
Around us, hell reigned. I didn’t know what it was that Ananizarte set into motion, but it was a dreadful sight. Fire and darkness: the pillar of flames had grown large enough to reach the ceiling of the hall, emanating waves of a crimson inferno that incinerated everything in their path with coiling tendrils of darkness wreathed above them. In less than a minute, the Shield of Shadows had lost almost a third of its strength. I couldn’t waste any more time.
Onward through the flames, past the gargoyles bursting into stone shrapnel! Faster! The corridor was full of succubi fighting against the arriving Pandas. The hemispheric shield moved with us, knocking them all down like toy soldiers.
Up the staircase, then left. A crowd of Pandorum warriors had put up a shield wall there, raining down magic and steel and immediately stripping us of ten percent of our defense. Fortunately, the surviving succubi broke out of the passage behind us, charging the Pandas, while I used their momentary confusion to crash right into the enemy ranks. The dome threw aside everyone in my path as if it were a tank.
The next room was empty. As I peeked out of it, I barely managed to hide. The clan hall was teeming with Pandas. More and more players kept logging in, appearing in the air every second. Atrocity turned into a frenzied anthill as fresh warriors of Pandorum ran down the stairs and passageways to meet the gleaming crimson fire raging in its depths. I had no idea what Ananizarte was doing, but the floor was still trembling beneath my feet, its vibration permeating the entire castle.
Even if the Shield held out, soon I would get an entire train of pursuers that would kill us as soon as we lost our defenses. I had to distract them somehow, and for that, I had prepared my surprise number three.
I touched the Tiara of Prince Consort and selected the Grand Summoning ability in the interface.
“Hang in there; it’s going to be a little scary,” I whispered in Weldy’s ear as she was shaking.
Scarlet lines of a pentagram flashed on the floor of the hall, and a seven-foot-tall demoness stepped out of the flames, equipped for battle. She looked terrifying, her large purple wings spread out around her, claws in their creases, with her flowing black hair, a serrated moon-shaped shield, and the spiked whip of the Succubus Queen. Unblinking scarlet eyes stared from under her ornate visor.
“You called us, and the Succubate came!” Mara growled in a guttural voice that sounded anything but feminine.
* * *
A day earlier
My room in Karn’s tavern was a great place to think, with nobody ever bothering me. Once again, I picked through my belongings, choosing only the best of presents. One couldn’t visit Pandas without gifts!
All right, then—a purple epic-level skillbook that had cost me almost a hundred thousand gold, a set of protective elixirs that included a carefully preserved mage’s gift, the Dragon Scale Potion...
I didn’t have a lot of time to think. I knew that inside Pandorum’s castle, my plan might easily go off-script. I had to prepare and milk my options for all they were worth.
The legendary Deity’s Proxy archetype, which was given to me by Tormis. An extremely rare thing! I hadn’t found anything about it on the Net except for murky speculations about proxy abilities being tailored to each wearer and lots of terrifying videos showcasing owners of legendary archetypes perpetrating all sorts of imbalanced stuff. Nothing useful, essentially. I would have to learn everything by myself.
I opened the interface. Eighteen free attribute points accumulated over the last month were glowing in the corner of the character profile, inviting me to spend them. I could invest them into my main stats: Constitution, Strength, Dexterity, and others, significantly empowering my avatar, or expend them on developing my archetype abilities, improving them, and unlocking new ones. That was a dilemma.
I had been saving up character points, dreaming of using them to unlock the Trade Master epic archetype. The requirements were basically known: a Charisma and Intelligence build laid out by Olaf himself. It seemed, however, that I would have to put those plans on the back burner. The proxy’s legendary abilities seemed much more enticing.
I put ten points into Shadow Sight and Shadow Eyes, maxing them out. According to the description, that allowed me to see in the Shadow Plane just as well as in the material one. I could also find caches and hidden passages and use the sight and the hearing of any shadow within a thousand-step range. That was a godsend for a spy! A pleasant chiming sound notified me of reaching the second rank of the proxy archetype: Shadow Listener.
Well, let’s see what we have here... But as I looked at the new skills, I winced in disappointment.
Shadow Travel (0/5): you can enter and move through the Shadow Plane for up to 30 seconds / 1 hour.
Shadow Talk (0/5): you can hear the mumbling of shadows and understand individual words. You can read basic writing in Shadowspeak.
The first ability was a weaker copy of my cloak’s property. From the looks of it, it could evolve into Shadow Run, too. The second skill was curious but completely useless in my circumstances. Definitely not what I needed. I had expected to unlock powerful attacking or defensive abilities. Well, it’s not like I could turn back time. I allocated one point to each ability. That left me with six free points, which I saved for a rainy day.
It was time for my next move. I pulled out the scarlet prism of the Transformation Gem. The legendary magic stone was glowing from the inside, making my fingers warm. It was a nifty thing, truly exclusive. None were for sale at the auction, and purchase bids started from eighty thousand. It had only one useful ability: allowing the user to transform into any creature of comparable size. The transformation wasn’t an illusion; the Gem changed your true form. There was no seeing through it, either; even Aelmaris’ Wrath couldn’t spot the difference. That’s how Daine had played our raid back in Helt Akor. There was one restriction: you couldn’t make direct copies of other players. This and one more thing made the Gem all but useless to me.
However, it was leverage against the Succubate. I put the Transformation Gem back into the chest, locked it, and stopped to think. It was time to figure things out with the Mistress once and for all, or the annoying demoness would never leave me in peace, especially since she had the ability to summon me into the Abyss once in three days. I needed to teach her a lesson in fear so it would never even occur to her—and prepare a gift for Pandorum while I was at it.
I touched the Tiara of Prince Consort, summoning Mara into my world.
She answered the call.
I felt her iron grip on my throat, scratching it with her purple nails, and Mara pulled me up in the air.
“You’re just in time, darling! I was thinking about you!” she hissed, giving me a fiery look. “Where is the Transformation Gem? Tell me, wretch!”
The pupils of her eyes turned into pentagrams, radiating blue light that bound us together.
You reflected Demon Sight with Ascetic!
I wasn’t in the mood for tricks, and winged ladies who started a conversation by grabbing me by the throat only made it worse. So you want to play? All right!
I slipped into the Shadow and immediately landed right behind the Queen of the Succubate, throwing her toward the bed with a sharp blow and p
inning her down. Aelmaris flashed with blue light.
“See that? Lie down and don’t move!” I pressed the fiery sword right into the face of the startled demoness. “One move, and the Succubate will need a new queen!”
“Take it away, One of the Seven!” Mara shrieked, afraid to stir. “Take it away! This is an Eater! It’s burning me! Who’s inside of it? WHO?!”
“You’ll find out if you misbehave!” I promised her, drawing back a little and loosening my grip.
“Well, if we’re already lying down, why not?” Her lips stretched in a vicious grin, demonstrating sharp fangs. Mara was rapidly transforming: her claws retracted, her horns, wings, and tail disappeared, and in a second, a slender girl with long black hair huddled up in the corner of the bed.
“Do you like me more now?” she asked. “You won’t threaten me with your sword anymore, will you? I prefer a weapon of another kind...”
As if by accident, her blue, golden-hemmed dress slipped from her shoulder, exposing a little more of her than it was supposed to. Gazing at me with her innocent gray-blue eyes, Mara offered, “I think my corset is unbuckled... I can’t reach it. Maybe you can help?”
Shadow Seer (Rogue Merchant Book #3): LitRPG Series Page 1