The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series by Roman Prokofiev (top books to read TXT) 📕

the fire of wounded pride. Getting his epic back, making a promise, and losing it straight away seemed like a trashy comedy. Kesson, Darknet? Who was the clan leader? He would sort it out.

Kesson: It was a real circus. He threatened us! So much butt hurt! Such a tasty video, look for it tomorrow on the off forum, you’ll laugh your ass off.

 

HotCat: What about the ring?

 

Kesson: I accepted the contract and got the money. I sent it to you, just as we agreed.

 

HotCat: I owe you one.

 

Kesson: Call me up if you find any more marks.

 

Chapter 13

I FOUND SOMETHING really cool on the Net. It was a fansite, or rather, an actual portal belonging to the so-called Pioneers. That community, as well as the eponymous in-game clan, were fans of exploring new worlds, who worshipped the romance of the frontier. The site boasted a veritable ocean of interesting and useful information, articles, videos, and guides, but the best thing about the Pioneers was the tool for creating an interactive map of Sphere.

Any player could upload maps from their Atlas, expanding and updating their data. On top of that, Pioneers’ database also pulled records from lots of other sources, including kill rating and the map of territorial influence. As a result, we got a digest of interactive charts for most of the worlds with a lot of handy filters.

That’s what I was busy playing with.

And that’s where AlexOrder’s Atlas truly came in handy, too. I uploaded and synchronized detailed maps of Dorsa, our world, and was now absorbed into analyzing it.

Our world had five continents, but the main of them, Dorsa, located in the center, was also the largest one, taking up almost the entire eastern hemisphere. To the west, across the ever-raging ocean, we had Farsids, the land of Japanese clans. The Japanese often raided the western coast of Dorsa, but they were an enemy we knew well, with the same squabbles and fun gained by both sides.

Ketel, a square-shaped continent in the northeast, was almost uninhabited and only started to be colonized. There was another faction war going on there, with bright fires indicating high PvP activity. We also had Trom and Tar-Sadar, but they were smaller, closer to islands, and far away.

Dorsa was populated with Russian speakers, and almost 50% of the Russian segment of Sphere made their living right there. It was the most “Russian” of worlds, with foreign players making up no more than 10% of the entire population, other than Japanese, who were mostly citizens of the Confederation anyway.

I opened the image of the central continent and zoomed in, then checked the Territorial Influence box. The areas owned by kingdoms and clans studded the map with a scattering of many-colored spots. Now, I had to turn on Trade Activity and Average Online, with a scheme of stationary teleports and trade routes on top of it.

And that’s what I got.

The biggest trade hub of Dorsa was Golden Fairs. It was situated right in the center of the continent, at the crossroads of trade routes. The brightest one was the indicator of trading, as it was the focal point, the merchant mecca, the most crowded city of our world.

Dan-na-Eyre, my current place of residence, was in the north and northwest of the continent. It was a vast yet savage area, with rugged terrain and relatively underpopulated. The Northern Alliance, which included the Watchers, had almost a hundred thousand on the roll-call, but most of them were peaceful farmers and crafters scattered over the lands captured by PvPers. They paid rent, mined ore, gathered resources, farmed mobs, and explored dungeons. I was curious where those of them who handled their own logistics sold the riches of the Wild Lands. Those players were the majority, and only a third of our tenants handed over their cargo to Phoenix.

Blue dotted lines of trade routes originating from dozens of outposts crossed the Wild Lands, the borderlands, and the kingdoms, coming together in the nearest hub — Eyre. It made sense: it had the regional auction and a pier for flying ships. But Eyre was unable to absorb all the mined resources: its capacity was limited.

Therefore, they used the following scheme: Wild Lands — Eyre — Fairs or the Bazaar. From the forts, carebears moved their cargo via NPC caravans to Eyre, where they loaded it into flying ships destined for the Bazaar or Golden Fairs, depending on the size and the sellers’ greed. This plan was used to feed a whole crowd of players and NPCs — carriers, traders, resellers, captains of trading vessels.

There was only one weak spot: security. This is why players were so willing to pay the Watchers and other clans like them to rent their territory. On their land, PvPers ensured order and safety, mercilessly annihilating gangs of stray PKers who tried to profiteer off robbing helpless caravans. That territory was pretty quiet, both in the Wild Lands and the border areas beloved by player killers. I remembered that Flame and Valkyrie had told me about it back when I had been starting out.

Here, they ruthlessly stopped the chaos that reigned in the other parts of Wild Fields, where I had made the acquaintance of Don and his guys not that long ago. It wasn’t even a part of the agreement: essentially, the Watchers only pledged to keep them safe in the event of outside aggression and protect them if anybody tried to chase them off the land they rented. Still, the PvP fans were too bored, not getting enough of their favorite pastime, and were happy to play policemen, arduously tracking outsider gangs.

I looked through the alliance mail and checked all accessible channels. At the core, the Northern Alliance was a pretty amorphous enterprise, having no unified control, with the only method of coordination being the alliance