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

the railing, and suddenly saw a slender girl effortlessly running across the waves. Smiling and playfully tossing her flowing hair, she beckoned to me and pulled away from the ship, translucent and laughing. A ghost? An unspeakably sad tune began playing in my ears—the girl was singing in an unknown language.

You reflect Song of the Sea with Ascetic!

As I looked around, I saw almost everyone drinking in her song, drawn toward its source, their expressions strange. Bonus was almost about to climb over the railing. I grabbed him by the belt, holding him back, and Thrainul yelled, breaking the Singer’s enchantment, “Fire! Attack her, wake up!”

The chain gun on the bow fired a sharpened harpoon missile, the thin metal chain uncoiling in its wake. The shot hit the water, and the spear fully submerged, only to slowly reappear a second later. The singing girl vanished, her song stopping with a dissonant howl of pain. The protruding shaft twitched, straining the chain to the limit with enough force to shake the Abyssal’s hull.

“Finish it! Finish it, or it will escape!” Thrainul shouted.

Stormbreaker, Rocky, and someone else grabbed the bows and the bombards and started firing at the pale smudge hit by the harpoon. The creature hiding underwater twitched a few more times and finally resurfaced in a deformed white blob that resembled a clump of sticking hair. She uttered a sorrowful, almost human-like, moan and stopped dead, expiring.

The spool of the harpoon wound up, dragging the prey back to the ship, and several hooks raised the body aboard. I stepped back, recoiling in disgust. A Medusa-like creature the size of a human was lying on the deck, spilling sickening-looking ectoplasm across the floor. Hundreds of pale “braids,” a translucent, gelatinous body barely masking the dark shapes of the internal organs...

“Meet the Singer,” Thrainul introduced the dead monster. “You can add it to your bestiary. A ghostly monster with hypnosis and illusion skills. Inhabits the outskirts of the Sea of Terror. On a one to five danger scale, it’s about a two.”

“What does it drop?”

“We’ll show you!” Thrainul chuckled. One of his assistants stepped forward and stood above the body, and the curved blade of a skinning knife flashed in his hands. I looked the other way—sometimes, Sphere was a little bit too realistic, especially when it came to gutting various freaks.

“Ectoplasm, rare ingredients...and that’s it? Eww.” I heard Fayana’s voice.

“Sometimes, we get a Minor Stone of Distortion. Two hundred coins. But only from adult specimens; this one is too small.”

“What’s the use for these ingredients? Alchemy?”

“Mostly, yes, but we usually use them in a different way. You’ll see.”

“It was all too simple and fast,” I told the approaching Gravekeeper. “Over before I knew it. I was promised terrifying underwater monsters, and this is just an overgrown medusa.”

After hearing me out, Rocky burst out laughing.

“Did you think it was a hunt?” he asked me amidst his laughter. “Seriously?”

“Yes, so?”

“Oh, no, man. We’ve just caught live bait.”

Thrainul and his assistant were deftly packing whatever had been inside the Singer into a black, red, and purple orb, holding it down with a net and a few metal chains.

“See that? It’s our bait,” the Gravekeeper said with a smirk. “We’re going to attach it to a hook, and that’s when the real hunt will begin.”

The bait turned out to be three feet in diameter, probably designed for one hell of a mouth. The hook was the four-bladed harpoon from the rear chain gun. What kind of prey were they going to catch? An elephant?

But Thrainul seemed to know what he was doing. The bait and the hook fell into the water, attached to a thick anchor chain able to hold an astral ship—it served as the fishing line. After that, the Abyssal’s armor plates moved up, preparing us for submersion. So the “fishing hunt” would happen underwater, after all?

“Thrainul, we need to hurry. Vultures are coming.”

“Blind sharks? How many?”

“Three. No, four.”

“Whatever. We’ll make it! Everybody ready? Let’s go down! You’re going to see a real live Hole safari!”

Chapter 13

THE ABYSSAL STARTED submerging, and water splashed against the portholes. In a moment, the darkness behind the thick glass windows was replaced with translucent dark malachite.

“Cap, they’re close!”

“Move it!” Thrainul grumbled as he spun the steering wheel and pulled at some levers. “Rocky! Lower the bait deeper, or they’ll eat it, I swear to God!”

“Deeper?” The Gravekeeper gave the captain an odd look. “Are you sure, Cap?”

“Do what I say, you damn zombie!” the zwerg exclaimed. “We’re just on the periphery!”

“As you wish!” Rocky released the clamp, and the large anchor chain started unwinding with a loud clanging, quickly disappearing in the pitch-black abyss.

A powerful blow to the top hemisphere shook the descending ship, making the armor plates screech pitifully. A long dark shadow flashed past the portholes. Pressed against the round windows, the Pioneers and I tried to study the next dweller of the underground ocean.

That was a sight best left forgotten. I flinched back as I saw a giant maw with several rows of teeth fly right at me, and another powerful blow rocked the hull. A crack appeared on the outer window, and copper rivets groaned around the porthole. I felt shivers down my spine—the creatures the seeker had called “blind sharks” hit like hydraulic hammers. However, the captain and the crew didn’t seem worried, other than Rocky, who was cursing as he loosened the chain.

Cigar-shaped silhouettes circled the ship, long and flexible, covered with glistening black skin. They looked more like eels or morays than sharks, but the other half of the name proved true—there was no sign of eyes above their huge round maws.

“These are mutant blind sharks,” Thrainul explained to the curious Bonus. “Vultures. They’re drawn to the smell of bait and emanations