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

five quick slots rather than the usual three and served as a small inventory space. All of these items were useless to me, as I didn’t wear cloth armor or use magic. The dagger, however...

I wistfully stroked the broad blade, curved like a hawk’s beak. The dagger would go to me.

Dead Principate’s Blade

Quality: epic. Material: ancient alloy, rikhar skin. Durability: 370/500.

Damage: 30–60 (piercing, slashing)

+100 SP to Daggers

+100 SP to Necromancy

+8 Dexterity

Silence: upon hit, applies Silence for 10 seconds.

Principate’s Victim: upon hit, temporarily steals a random attribute and transfers it to the wielder. Duration: 5 minutes. 1 use/30 minutes.

When I equipped the dagger in the left-hand slot, the system informed me that I needed the Ambidextrous skill. No big deal; I would buy it at the Bazaar or take it from the clan storage. It was a good weapon. If I left the Shadow Plane and used it to backstab an enemy, they wouldn’t even get the chance to scream. And the last affix was something special—not Aelmaris, not by a long shot, but in certain situations, using the flaming sword wasn’t the best idea. The only thing that bothered me was the bonus to Necromancy, but on the other hand...

My chest still held the scrolls once copied by Alex from Fokial’s book that we had obtained in the Tombs of Necromancers. All of them needed a certain value in Necromancy skill. I looked over the scrolls, refreshing my memory: Rigor Mortis, Pitch Darkness, Mass Blind...

Mass Blind needed just 50 points in Necromancy and applied a minute-long blinding debuff to a group of enemies, simple and useful. What was it Olaf had told me about keeping the elevator in Helt Akor confidential? Back in the day, guests used to be blindfolded so that they couldn’t see the way. The old tricks were the best.

* * *

“Who are they?” Komtur asked, dumbfounded at the sight of the motley crew of dwarven miners sitting on the ship’s tank. This time, we decided to use the clan’s new frigate to travel to the entrance, as it was faster and safer. Komtur wanted to test-drive it, too. So far, the ship was piloted by the veteran pilot Borland, but some of the Watchers were already leveling up the required skills, getting closer to him.

“The Jordi. They’re with me. Well, with us,” I corrected myself.

“To Helt Akor? What for?” Komtur asked, looking at me with the kind eyes of a blue-collar worker with a drinking problem.

“I want to mine ellurite in that cave,” I explained.

Komtur turned away and made a hopeless gesture: whatever; there’s no helping this one. Olaf, however, flared up, incensed.

“Cat, why haven’t you brought it up with anyone? This is a stupid idea. First, there isn’t much ellurite there. Second, how are you going to ship it from there? There are no trade caravans going through Helt Akor! Third, haven’t you forgotten that the Crossroads elevator is top secret? If they see us using it, the whole of Sphere will soon know!”

Right, Olaf hadn’t seen that sea of ellurite, I realized. He had no idea how much there was. Fine. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. And really, I was the “key” to the Crossroads; without me, the raid couldn’t go far. I could dictate my terms, and they had to make do.

“There’s a way to keep the secret!” I dangled several scrolls from my collection in front of the analyst.

“Pitch Darkness, Mass Blind? Replicas of Fokial’s spells? Did you take them from clan storage?”

“Nope, these are mine. AlexOrder made copies,” I explained.

“Yes, I think I recall,” Olaf said, narrowing his eyes. “I agree; it might work. But why did you...”

Jeez, he was a real pain in my neck! We spent the entire trip arguing, and he only stopped his nagging when the ship approached Helt Akor. The three mountains of Irth-Garth loomed before us, and the Claw Tower appeared on the horizon between the snowy wedges. Something was going on there; the players rushed to the shipboard, pointing at something.

A sharp scarlet ray was beaming from the tower, extending high into the clouds. Above it, the mother of all storms was gathering, creating an enormous whirlwind. Swarms of winged predators flew in the sky, and streams of dark spots slowly crawled the white slopes. Booming thunder mixed with distant rumbling reached us.

I saw my clanmates exchange worried looks, Olaf whispering something in Komtur’s ear while the latter kept staring in that direction, his palm pressed against his forehead. Something weird was going on, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly.

“War!” Alex dropped the bomb. “The Lady’s gathering her armies!” That was something new. The entire House of Darkness was gathering here!

PROJECT made their presence known around the Weeping Devil, their castle. Several birdies were following our ship, keeping a respectable distance. That made me rather nervous; we were in full view of the castle crystal. They couldn’t attack us outright due to the agreement, but they were quite capable of pointing us out to someone else. That said, a battle frigate was no trifling matter; one could easily choke on it. Still, we quickly disembarked and entered the dungeon.

The reddish light of the well between the layers, the colossal spiral staircase winding down along its wall—nothing had changed since our previous visit. Even the fractured shadows cast by torchlight still flickered grotesquely on the stone. After sending out scouts, we descended in a battle formation. Only one thing was different: thirty bearded, broad-shouldered dwarves marching in the center, tools bundled on their backs.

Right on the staircase, we stumbled into our first random encounter: a small site Abbot nicknamed the Stone Garden. It was quite harmless by the standards of Endless Paths, a dozen ten-foot-tall animated stone statues. Our mages put them down almost immediately, strewing the floor with shards of