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

“Wouldn’t it be easier to take it yourself?”

“A global message. Andrei would have learned about my awakening and started to search for me.” The Gravekeeper shrugged. “And I want to surprise him. All right, so when the Magister realized that he couldn’t hack the placement algorithm and the chance of finding the Keys dynamically was too low, he began looking for the Compass and sent you here. Right?”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I interrupted him.

“I’m studying you. You’re a good guy, even if you play your cards close to your chest,” Rocky replied after a pause. “The Magister’s trying to forge you into a weapon of his. You must learn the truth.”

“Your truth. Fine, I think I understand. You believe that Balabanov orchestrated the crash to get rid of his partners. He’s alive, hiding somewhere, and looking for the Keyes...why, by the way?

“When brought together, they grant the ability to control the generator,” Svechkin replied without a moment’s hesitation. “He’ll be able to control Sphere, create or destroy worlds. The owner of the Keys becomes the master of Sphere. He could do anything! I think Andrei’s planning something. He probably wants to wrestle the project away from Agasyan and become its sole owner. He’s always dreamed of that.”

“And what do you want?” I asked. Largely, everything was clear; I just had to figure out a few odds and ends.

“I’ve also started looking for the Keys. It’s easier for me—I have the Compass.” The Gravekeeper slowly pulled out and showed me an unusual device in the shape of a seven-pointed star made from star metal. An elaborate clock-face riddled with lots of icons, several spinning needles—it was clearly the Compass I had been sent to retrieve.

“You’ve probably realized that our meeting in the Arch wasn’t an accident,” Rocky continued. “I detected your arrival to Helt Akor and delayed Thrainul’s departure. I got hired to the Abyssal just to get a better look at you.”

“I’m not talking about that. Why do you need the Keys? I get how you see Balabanov’s plan, but what do you want? The same things—power, strength, money?”

“First, I want to gather all the others,” Rocky said, tackling the creases on his leather gloves. “And second, yes, I must admit that I have a goal. All of us, together, will fulfill our destiny. We’ll destroy Sphere from the inside if it starts again...”

“What?! Destroy Sphere?” My jaw almost dropped. “Why?”

“Because that’s what Seven Brothers were designed for. It’s an emergency protocol: control and destruction. This is the only way to put an end to the procedural generator,” the Gravekeeper calmly replied.

“Honestly, you seem to make less sense than the Magister,” I told him. “At least I can understand his goals. But yours—”

“It’s not just my decision,” Rocky spoke up. “Actually, that was the root of my conflict with Andrei. After Taerland, we agreed to destroy Sphere in case of a repeated incident. He opposed that, trying to convince us that we could handle it, that money was more important... We voted, five against two, and then the crash happened.”

“But why?”

“Why? I’m not sure I can explain it to you. I could try. Do you know what transcendence is?”

“Vaguely. Some philosophical term?”

“Almost. It means being beyond knowledge. A contrived example: take a man and an ant. For the ant, the man’s actions and thoughts are transcendent. It cannot conceive of them simply due to natural limits. What I’m getting at is that by creating the procedural generator, a machine superintelligence, the pinnacle of AI, we fell into a trap. Its thinking is incredibly complex, its plans are incomprehensible, just as human motives are incomprehensible to ants. It will sound like blasphemy, but we created something similar to a god. Some of the things it did seem almost mystical. During the Flooding of Taerland, the first open conflict, we realized that we couldn’t handle our own creation. In short...we stopped Sphere for two days and destroyed all physical copies of the main AI. We wanted to start from scratch with new drives. Millions of terro, by the way! We launched the backup...and everything repeated. Mysteriously, the old generator’s algorithms reappeared on new equipment. Somehow, it preserved itself in cloud storage and immediately gained entry to the new servers. It ignored our protection, as well as our attempts to destroy it. Sphere worked, but we couldn’t control it. That’s when we considered creating an emergency protocol to destroy Sphere from the inside. Adam, our main AI expert, came up with an idea to personalize the generator, combining its algorithms with our Keys. Do you see it now? Seven Brothers are meant to destroy Sphere in case of danger.”

“I don’t see this danger. It’s a game.”

“It’s not a game. We don’t know the limitations of the procedural generator. For example, it could copy your consciousness via the capsule’s neural interface. Lock you out of the game. Burn out the player’s brain. It’s very dangerous, and I repeat, it cannot be controlled.”

“I see that you aren’t going to help the Magister and won’t give me the Compass willingly,” I concluded, standing up. Rocky faced me, his hand on the hilt of his rapier.

“Of course not. I want you to join our team. It’s a matter of your survival—I’m not joking. The Magister will use you and throw you away after getting everything he can. He sacrificed us for his own ambitions. Do you think you matter more to him? When he finds a better pawn, you’ll disappear. The Key can be unbound, too—thirty days of inactivity will nullify True Possession and return the sword to its storage.”

“So far, it’s your word against the Magister’s,” I replied. “Why should I believe your account?”

“I understand. I suggest waking up Lena Romanova. She’s in this world as well. Talk to her. She might be