Shadow Seer (Rogue Merchant Book #3): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (read ebook pdf .TXT) 📕

“They’re farming!” Raccoon said with a disgusted expression—he was known for hating PVE. “They found something there worth even rebinding their Soul Stones for. You can’t pry them away from there with a crowbar, only via a portal to the castle.”

I wondered about the new faction the Watchers had found in the Paths. They were so busy earning reputation with new NPCs that they didn’t scold me even for the loot lost at the Ziggurat. Well, they had mentioned it once or twice. And really, what was the worst that could happen to the loot? It might lose several points of durability, and that was it. In Sphere, all dropped items disappeared only upon reaching zero hit points. I had a daily teleport to the Temple of Shadow; I could get there any time.

After getting a set of keys from Xan, our housekeeper-slash-clerk, we picked one of the numerous empty apartments, and I made sure that Weldy settled in without a hitch. She liked it there: a mountain view from the lancet windows, oil paintings on the stone walls, and a spacious two-room “suite” designed for a clan member. Frederick approved of that choice, digging his claws into the tapestry with a drawn-out meow. Essentially, that place had everything and, most importantly, security—the Watchers would protect her. She would also have things to do: Condor’s alchemic lab was quite spectacular and had everything for leveling up alchemy.

I still had to figure out the issue with delivering elixirs to the Dan-na-Eyre army, but it didn’t require a lot of hands-on management. The shipments were transported directly from Davna; make a few corrections, send out several letters, and they were set to go. The system still needed some measure of control, but I hoped that for some time, it would function independently.

After dealing with that, I returned to Eyre. My inbox was bursting with PMs and letters. The Pandas were ominously silent. Maybe after the conversation with Phantom and Jerkhan, they had realized that it was pointless. As if I would pay them back! Fat chance!

* * *

Five mil was a serious amount of money, and at that moment, it felt astronomical to me. My knees were quivering as the adrenaline went away. I couldn’t forget Phantom’s final phrase. Most likely, we would have to meet, even if I didn’t want that.

I decided to leave a million in the game and withdraw the rest. That money would solve all my real-life problems; it was enough to pay off the loans and live comfortably for a pretty long time. I wouldn’t have to bother myself with dredging up funds for the next monthly payment, allowing me to focus on yummy trading.

That’s where the first surprise hit me. The withdrawal request sent via the banking interface was immediately blocked. The money was frozen in my account, the application crossed with a bold red line, and a letter emblazoned with the golden insignia of the Golden Hamster fell into the tray.

Chapter 4

Dear customer, we inform you that in accordance with paragraph 3, item 5 of the Federal Law of Confederation “On the rules of circulation of virtual currency,” all exchange amounts over one hundred thousand terro must be registered in branch offices of the issuer of the virtual currency. The list of required documents is as follows...

DAMMIT! The so-called Gaming Codex governing the legal relations between the players and the gaming companies had a lot of fine points that I had no idea about, being used to moving under the radar. As I examined the letter and the quoted law, I realized that I was expected to willingly present myself to the nearest Golden Hamster office, identify myself, give them copies of my IDs with a digital signature, and fill out a special bank and a tax declaration. Then the clerks would accept my application.

Amounts under one hundred thousand terro didn’t require any red tape at all and could be withdrawn quickly enough. I tried splitting the money into several smaller applications, but it didn’t help. The admins weren’t fools; they controlled the entire sum, no matter the number of lots. Basically, without any papers, taxes, and other red tape, I could withdraw no more than a million gold per month. Anything over that was under strict control.

I realized that they really didn’t like giving out large sums. I had to think about that later: read the forums, figure out the whole deal. So why was it like that?

Around ten years before, after the collapse of the global economy, the creation of the Confederation, and the victory march of the Russian-Japanese golden terro across Eurasia, we had received new laws regulating the flow of cryptoelectric virtual currency. In short, it was officially recognized by the government but was subject to audit, control, and taxation. The system had already been tested in Japan, currently resting at the bottom of the sea. Trillions of minor transactions were incredibly hard to track, which is why the limit of one hundred thousand terro was imposed. If you wanted to withdraw any more, you had to file a tax return and pay. Nobody cared about the small fry—which I used to be until that day.

At that time, all VR games had switched over to the then-innovative “living economy” scheme. With real money being both deposited and withdrawn from virtual reality, in-game currencies stopped being candy wrappers. It was a real boom, which I had taken part in—and made money in the process.

Everyone shared the same problem, however. Sooner or later, any in-game currency lost its value. I had seen it myself. Players kept farming more and more, and wares grew cheaper. Exchange rates plummeted, requiring you to farm even more to earn money, and so on. After milking a game dry, professional farmers moved on to another. Admins tried fighting the issue; some redenominated their currency, and some, like COSMOS ONLINE,