The Starlight Sword Read online

  The Starlight Sword

  by Roman Prokofiev

  Rogue Merchant

  Book #1

  Magic Dome Books

  Rogue Merchant

  Book #1: The Starlight Sword

  Copyright © Roman Prokofiev 2020

  Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2020

  English translation copyright © Sofia Shcherbakova, Alex A. Ryans 2020

  Editor: Irene Woodhead

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2020

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-80-7619-138-9

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the shop and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. Any correlation with real people or events is coincidental.

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  Table of Contents:

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1. Character Creation

  Chapter 2. Tutorial

  Chapter 3. Superchick

  Chapter 4. Day One

  Chapter 5. Valkyrie And Flame

  Chapter 6. Mysterious Sword

  Chapter 7. Star Metal

  Chapter 8. Date Night With Weldy

  Chapter 9. Operation Arrows

  Chapter 10. Liberty

  Chapter 11. Richi Clever

  Chapter 12. Tombs Of The Necromancers

  Chapter 13. Carnage

  Interlude. Admins

  Chapter 14. Snow

  Chapter 15. Aelmaris The Blue

  Interlude. The Goddess

  Chapter 16. War

  Chapter 17. Eternal Warrior

  Chapter 18. Eyre Under Fire

  Chapter 19. The Watchers

  Chapter 20. The Battle

  Chapter 21. The Quest

  Chapter 22. Enslaved

  Chapter 23. Banned

  Chapter 24. Rollback

  Interlude. Tao — Komtur

  Chapter 25. Betrayal

  Chapter 26. Svoy

  Chapter 27. Nonames

  Chapter 28. Project Hell

  Chapter 29. The Order

  Chapter 30. The Magister

  Epilogue

  About Roman Prokofiev

  Dear Readers,

  We’re relaunching this LitRPG series by Roman Prokofiev - or rather, we’re relaunching Book One. Some of you might have already read its previous version released a while ago by another publisher under the title Cat’s Game (also known as Cat’s Quest). The author has completely reworked the book’s first chapters; he’s also already completed Book Two of the series, fully intending to keep the story going. And we fully intend to release the whole series in English.

  Rogue Merchant is a classic might-and-magic-style LitRPG series with the elements of manapunk. It’s set in the Sphere of Worlds: a worldwide multiverse comprised of hundreds of worlds, from horrible Infernos ruled by Demon Lords to mechanical worlds inhabited by sentient constructs, and gigantic markets that have sprouted at the crossroads of trade routes.

  Players use astral ships to travel between worlds, otherwise they have to venture into the perilous underground tunnels of the Endless Paths. Dozens of powerful clans share this delicious pie, scheming or waging wars against each other.

  The series’ main character is Cat, a wannabe merchant who specializes in procuring in-game valuables to sell them for real money. He is a Free Merchant, which is both his character’s class and his playing style - as well as his preferred problem-solving method. Cat is a cunning trickster who wriggles his way out of trouble thanks to his quick wit and his trading talents. His credo is, “Anyone can be bought provided the price is right”.

  Cat starts from scratch, using every opportunity to advance his plans. This book is the story of a common trader’s rise to greatness until he becomes the world’s new legend, the most famous merchant in the entire Sphere of Worlds.

  The series focuses on the economics of a game world, including various trade methods such as regular and auction trading, as well as social and political interactions between clans and players. Plenty of intrigue and espionage, betrayal, trade wars, besieged castles and epic air battles of flying ships - all this has already made the fantastical universe of Rogue Merchant popular with thousands of Russian readers.

  Now it’s your turn to enjoy it.

  Prologue

  “THIS IS OUR final offer. Are you ready to sign the contract?”

  The man I spoke to said nothing, his eyes glued to the majestic view. Hawkish silhouettes of dozens of spaceships were set against the background of a white-green planet. They surrounded the flagship, an enormous destroyer rigged with an asteroid cannon. I knew that the entire universe of COSMOS had no more than ten such colossi.

  “We’re counting on your word,” the man said slowly. “After all, this is a huge amount.”

  “As soon as you sign the contract, all of it will become the property of your alliance.”

  The in-game wallet blinked, indicating a new payment. The number of digits was awe-inspiring—I had never seen such a sum on my account. It was the biggest deal of my life.

  Keeping my glee at bay, I confirmed the transaction and nodded at the buyer.

  I had just sold an entire space fleet. Too bad it hadn’t been mine.

  I was only a middleman in the deal. Not quite officially, though—the real owner of the ships was convinced that I represented the buyer, while the buyer thought I acted on the behalf of the seller. A little bit of cunning, psychology, and social engineering, and I got a tidy sum in my pocket.

  Actually, that was my profession. I was a trader of in-game items.

  “When can we collect the ships?”

  “Very soon. In a few minutes,” I replied with a smile.

  There was only one thing left to do—transfer the money, minus my fee, to the real seller. Cheating them wasn’t part of my plan; the sum was too big. I was bound to get into a lot of trouble if I decided to appropriate it. It was better to settle for the fee.

  I found the account number of the real owner of the fleet, entered the numbers, and activated the transaction.

  Transaction denied. Please contact the administrators to learn more.

  The next moment, I received a red message spanning the entire screen.

  Your account has been blocked on suspicion of fraud.

  * * *

  Cat: So that’s how the story goes. I can’t log in from any of my accounts or create a new one.

  Humorist U: You got banned…permanently—both by your ID and hardware. Congrats! Try sending an email to the admins begging them to unblock you.

  Cat: I did. The answer’s the same…blah, blah, blah, RMT, get lost. I still have tons of money on my accounts. I’ll be torn apart.

  Humorist U:Agreed. NOT fun.

  Cat: Yeah, I’m totally screwed.

  Humorist U: There’s some of my money there, too.

  Cat: What do you suggest?

  Humorist U: I dunno; I need to think. See ya.

  Irritated, I banged on the keyboard, closing the chat window, then once again switched to COSMOS ONLINE to see a big red notification: r />
  YOU ARE BANNED!

  I couldn’t believe my luck. A huge deal had just gone wrong, leaving a vast sum of in-game currency on the blocked account. The seller wouldn’t get their money, the buyer wouldn’t get their ships, and both would see me as a fraud. The COSMOS admins didn’t give a damn; they had just cut me off from the game for good. Twelve accounts that had been a stable source of income for almost five years and, most importantly, a swag of property connected to virtual wallets were no longer available.

  So how much had I lost? At least several dozen millions of in-game currency held on the accounts, about as much in items and equipment, plus the cost of the accounts themselves, considering the high-level characters they contained. Tens of thousands of terro in real money and the giant sum for the ships made it astronomical. I felt scared. From the looks of it, I owed money I didn’t have.

  It was a resounding defeat. I had invested five years of my life into the game. It seemed to be the winner among the VRMMOs that had swept over the world after the advent of neurointerface—total immersion, a seamless world, and most importantly, an opportunity to deposit and withdraw real money. If you found a way to make money inside the game, you could live comfortably in the real world.

  I had always been a hardcore gamer, having studied the world of COSMOS inside and out and attempted numerous ways of earning before finally finding my favorite occupation: trade. Step by step, I gained reputation and made connections, creating my merchant empire. I could find and sell anything—from an in-game resource to an exceedingly rare item—act as a mediator, or help with the delicate issue of cashing out. The monopoly on financial transactions belonged to the administration, but as always, a lot of dealers fed at the trough, immediately resulting in a black market and clandestine gold-sellers. There were always people who didn’t want to wait, wishing to buy low, sell high, and avoid paying the tax. They were our clientele.

  My partner and I created COSMOGOLD, an underground Internet portal where anyone could bypass the rules to exchange in-game currency for real money, order an in-game item, or clinch a shady bargain. In all modesty, COSMOGOLD quickly became popular. Nick was in charge of the website, managed the operations, and controlled the marketing, while I used my in-game connections to act as a middleman, maintaining a stable inflow of currency. For a long time, the admins turned a blind eye to our work, and it seemed like we would string them along forever.

  Until one day, I got banned, completely and irrevocably, by my hardware ID and retinal imprint read by the VR capsule at logging in. The way into COSMOS was closed for good.

  So, where was I? I had fifteen hundred terro left on several card accounts, around a thousand in cash at home, and…

  “Alena!” I called my wife, who was watching TV in the bedroom. “Come over here, will you?”

  My dark-haired sleeping beauty was wearing a crimson robe that revealed her long legs. Annoyed, she stuck her head out from behind the door.

  “What?”

  “Can you send me the bills?”

  “Bills?” She came closer, yawning. “Which exactly?”

  “Credit, utility, our subscriptions, everything.”

  “All of them? Why?” she asked me, surprised.

  “I want to establish our budget.”

  My calculations were simple, and they sent shivers down my spine. Mortgage, credit payments for the capsule, utility bills, smart house subscription, wireless Internet access, and other small expenses totaled more than three thousand terro a month. Over the recent years, COSMOS had been making enough money for me to believe that it would always be like that.

  I had no safety net, and the money I had wasn’t enough to bay the existing bills. I had only a month to fix the situation. The laws of the Confederacy were cruel to non-paying citizens, and if I didn’t find some money, I could start having problems resulting in a trial, foreclosure, and loss of social status, plus a blackmark on my credit history that would never let me get credit. I didn’t like those prospects.

  I shook my head, dismissing the dark thoughts. I still had COSMOGOLD, our online portal with lots of linked accounts and property in various games. My partner—strong as ever—and I were sharing the profits, and it had been a while since I took my share.

  I needed to sleep on it. The next day, I would ask Nick to transfer the money I was due and discuss the situation while we were at it. Maybe we could figure something out. Worst-case scenario; that amount would last me two or three months until everything hopefully worked out.

  As I closed the annoying windows of COSMOS ONLINE with the BANNED sign—a real eyesore!—I misclicked and opened an obnoxious colorful 3D advertisement. “THE SPHERE OF WORLDS AWAITS THOSE WHO ARE WORTHY,” the glossy banner said. Just like in any other fantasy game, there were pictures of a voluptuous female elf wearing an armored bikini and a ruthless-looking overly muscular orc holding an axe—just the usual. I sighed, closed the window, and headed to bed.

  * * *

  I checked my email first thing the next morning. Unfortunately, all my requests to the COSMOS support team, submitted from various email accounts as well as on behalf of my banned characters, received a standard write-off response: You have been banned for violating the developer’s terms of service. Paragraph... blah, blah. RMT!

  I was worse off than I had thought the day before. I wasn’t the only one affected. Apparently, the administration had long since cast its net, looking for shady traders of in-game currency. A lot of accounts got blocked, and anyone directly or indirectly connected to RMT was caught in the crossfire.

  The official section of the COSMOS website featured the result of the ongoing operation ANTI-RMT:

  About a thousand accounts directly associated with RMT permanently banned…

  From one to three trillion frozen on RMT wallets…

  Tens of thousands of RMT transactions canceled…

  The forums were a mess. Threads were popping up all over: WHERE’S MY MONEY??!?!?!; WTF> MY WALLET HAS NEGATIVE THREE BILLION CREDITS???; MONEY GONE FROM MY ACCOUNT; I’VE BEEN BANNED, HELP!; and so on and so forth. Feeling uneasy, I opened the browser and went to our online store. It was unavailable, as if the servers were down.

  The nagging icon of the Courier, an instant messenger, appeared on my screen. Someone was requesting a conversation. Unknown caller, hmm… I put on my headphones and clicked the speaker icon.

  I recognized the calm voice of my latest client, the alliance leader who hadn’t received the ships. He was inside the game; in the background, I could hear a woman’s voice belonging to a COSMOS starship AI.

  “So, you recognize me,” he said, correctly guessing the reason for my silence. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said slowly. “I was banned. I’m trying to figure out a solution.”

  “See, we’ve already found out that you’re not the owner of the ships,” the voice said softly. “You’ve tricked us. A deal’s out of the question. We want our money back.”

  “It’s impossible. It’s on a blocked account.”

  “Cat, that’s your problem.” The voice was scarily measured. “We’ll accept an equivalent amount in real money.”

  “It’s impossible. Listen, it’s an emergency, everyone got—”

  “It’s you who should listen, Cat!” he said, interrupting me. “I think you misunderstand something. It’s not my money. It belongs to our alliance, to lots of people. You need to give it back.”

  “Contact the COSMOS administration to return it,” I said slowly.

  “It’s you we made a deal with.” The voice chuckled. “So, you don’t want to do this the easy way…”

  Not seeing a point in further conversation, I cut the call off. My contact apparently wanted to talk more, as the incoming call icon blinked again. I had to block the bothersome number. Where had he gotten my contact information, anyway? I could understand his anger—the scope of the deal was enormous; it was a painful blow to a thousand-player alliance—an astr
onomical sum. But what could I do? Only offer my sympathy. I had nothing to compensate their losses with.

  Putting aside those unpleasant reflections, I dove into the depths of the web, studying the official forums. The extent and the fallout from the wave of bans were disastrous. Everyone who had sold or exchanged in-game currency bypassing the administration or used third-party applications, bots, macros, or scripts was blocked forever without any possibility of unblocking. The buyers had the purchased sums deleted from their accounts, often resulting in a negative number.

  I silently applauded the COSMOS security team. They had put a lot of effort into studying the logs and tracing the chain of accounts and transactions that crafty traders like Nick and I had used to close our deals, covering our tracks. It didn’t help.

  That’s the gist of what the admins wrote:

  If you break the rules, we’ll seize your money and property.