Battle for the North (Rogue Merchant Book #4): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (the dot read aloud .TXT) 📕

the Eagles as they senselessly terrorize the Bazaar? So far, only one thing is clear: all trade operations are stopped, and Sphere’s largest market is blocked. Keep away from the Bazaar! Your safety there is not guaranteed.

The administration of Sphere of Worlds hasn’t commented on the new developments yet.

The forum was full of real gems, too.

What’s going on? The devil rebuking sins?

NAVY are trying to kill this game!

When will it end? I hope they’ll all get banned!

Cool event! How do I join NAVY?

Bastards! Morons! If I don’t get my ship and cargo back, I’ll cancel my subscription and file a lawsuit!

LOL, a loser got his three-million-gold nave destroyed. Carebears must suffer!

If you leave, sign away your stuff to my character.

Your messages made me renew my subscription.

After reading everything, I decided to take a week off to join the fun!

Someone’s going to make a lot of money on this.

A wide range of opinions was presented there, from the whining of those who had lost something to trolls pulling poker faces. Funnily, many players considered our actions a great user-generated event and were happy to join the chaotic battle across the Bazaar. Some did it for the lulz, some wanted to get in on the fat kills of cargo ships, and some hoped to catch fish in troubled water, picking up loot literally falling on everyone’s heads.

No area in Sphere was truly safe. The only things stopping chaos in NPC Kingdoms were losing karma and reputation and an inevitable retaliation carried out by sharp-speared faction guards. Still, many players didn’t care, creating temporary characters or completely focusing on the suicide style of play to take several opponents with them before dying. I stumbled into this phenomenon on my very first day of playing, when Superchick almost burned Alex and me down in the Golden Fairs.

Players were extremely inventive. Some made hunting in peace zones their main occupation, drawing satisfaction from their victim’s suffering rather than the kill itself. Others managed to turn it into a paying job, dividing the mission into several parts: players with positive karma searched for a plum target and led the killer to them while looters immediately picked up the dropped valuables. The Bazaar had entire clans that earned their living this way.

For the time being, they were out of work.

I liked working with NAVY. The Americans took an imaginative approach to their task, creating three combat unit types for Black Friday: kamikaze skiffs loaded with Bells, suicidal raiders mounted on two-seat birdies carrying a bomb instead of a passenger, and ordinary Veiled riders armed with classic Grand Fires.

The first was supposed to attack heavy targets such as dome-protected airships (per our calculations, simultaneous explosions of five or six bomber skiffs were enough to destroy an astral nave), the second was rigged against smaller vessels like undefended cargo ships, and the third cleared out and finished off everything that survived the first two. There was also the fourth type, although, strictly speaking, they didn’t take part in battle — looters with bottomless inventories that would pick the battlefield clean of dropped trinkets.

NAVY’s mission was simple: destroy all merchant traffic at the Bazaar. The Americans set their sights on all of the airship piers and interworld portals. While we prepared the trade part, playing with ellurite prices, trained people marked out spots, estimated the best attack and escape routes, and bought gear and ships. Suddenly, skiff hulls and rigging became hard to find, as NAVY purchased almost everything available at the auction.

Despite the tremendous financial expenses, such as losing kamikaze ships and gear during suicidal attacks and combat with NPCs, the operation turned out to be surprisingly profitable. The immense number of valuables — items and equipment dropped by our victims — significantly outweighed our losses, especially on the first day, before people could gather their wits, and our strikes reaped the bloodiest harvest. Soon, a large army of scavengers joined us, attacking everyone in the ensuing chaos. By starting Black Friday, we simply pulled the trigger, letting the genie of anarchy out of the bottle. In smoke and fire, killing each other and attacking any and all targets, many neutral players attempted to obtain the belongings of their slain counterparts or get a delicious kill.

The Bazaar had always been beloved by thieves and murderers scouting for moneybags. Entire communities of such players made their home there. A long time before, tired of perpetual crime, the mysterious Bazaar Lords hired an entire army of the Forged hailing from Forgeworlds, offering the dromonts a considerable concession in return. They were the strongest and fastest NPC guards wearing top-of-the-line gear.

They had brought law and order to the trade hub, filling it with their patrols. Players with low and extremely low karma who hid their nicknames under their hoods were constantly checked, and a system of bounties and murder licenses was introduced. The Bazaar became mostly safe — as safe as a city with six-digit daily traffic could possibly be.

However, even the Forged proved powerless before the might of thousands of players. They had no way to counteract the Veil. NAVY fighters rapidly lost karma and reputation by killing peaceful traders, and theoretically, would soon be declared non grata, attacked by NPCs on sight. Yet each time, the Eagles simply used invisibility to return to their ranks and continue their nefarious mission.

The Bazaar was burning. Multiple fires broke out across the city. Narrow streets, once full of chatting characters, were shrouded in a blanket of smoke. Shops were closed, and many buildings were destroyed by falling ships. Local NPCs hid in their homes, took shelter in towers, or fled from the city in a panic. The Americans didn’t go out of their way to attack the NPCs, but everyone got their share of damage from detonated Bells and AOE carpet bombing.

The skies were swept up in utter