The Gene of the Ancients (Rogue Merchant Book #2): LitRPG Series Read online

  For a while, nothing was happening. Before the alchemists or their clan traders started to pour into the market, the information needed to get to the interested parties.

  Three or four hours later, the price started to evolve. The cheapest lots sold out first, but after them, even the more expensive ones started to vanish from the market. Only five hundred gallons of blood were left on sale, while purchase prices went up. Late that night, demand exceeded supply, with players offering as much as 300-320 gold for the ingredient, and the remaining market stock rapidly trimmed down, as the largest and most expensive lot, the one that sold more than five hundred gallons for 401 gold, dwindled away.

  They fell for it. The local Dragon Blood dealers should be thankful; in one day, I helped them make as much money as they would have made in a month. It was time for the most risky part of my plan. Amidst the shortage, I needed to drive the price up and sell out my stock for as much as possible.

  I started bulling the market, offering to buy the blood for more and more money. The purchase price climbed up to 500 gold per gallon, with no available stock. It was the brief period before nobody put up the next batch of Dragon Blood; any second, a cunning merchant could pour out their entire supply, making everything go down the drain. My aim was to seize the moment of peak prices and quickly dump my four hundred gallons on the auction.

  Almost a dozen players were buying out the remaining market stock and increasing the purchase price in a bid to outrace me and each other. I physically sensed their excitement and thrill, also feeling carried away with the fervor. The most important thing, however, was to quit while I was ahead. The prices couldn’t be inflated indefinitely.

  The people involved in trading and crafting were certainly good enough with numbers. I knew that the bigheads had already taken my recipes to pieces, counted down the production cost, its profitability, and the approximate prices. I had done it a long time ago. By my estimates, the max price of Dragon Blood should have jumped to around 850 to 900; if it cost any more, the price of prepared elixir would become exorbitant. It wouldn’t last long, though, no longer than a few hours or days, but the craze could allow for some immense profits.

  When the purchase price rose to 600, I decided to ramp the buzz up. There was no available stock anymore, the list of sold lots clean as a whistle. The locals were holding on to their supply, either having already sold them or waiting for an even higher price. I could wait, too, but I wanted to get out while the getting was good.

  I quickly put up half of the remaining Dragon Blood for 999 gold, the only offer on the market, pretending to be an arrogant hustler hoping to make a quick buck. Then I paused. Nobody was buying at such a price, of course; my intention was to set the upper limit of the market and probe for possible competition. Naturally, they sprang to life, trying to outbid me and putting up new batches of the item. Immediately, the market started going down. I had to act fast.

  I created a few buying positions for 800, increasing the demand, but they didn’t last long. I put up even more, acting like I was ready to buy out at that price. Buying at a loss, I created the impression that the upper purchasing limit was increasing.

  First and foremost, trading is a battle of wills. When the price fluctuates, lots of players think with their emotions, rather than brain. I knew that right now, an unseen opponent was watching the sought-after goods disappear from the market, wavering on whether they should increase the purchase price.

  After a tedious minute, a fresh lot popped up. Somebody outbid me, buying at 800.01. At once, I removed all my dragon blood lots and selected that listing.

  Sell. Please enter quantity. 439. Confirm.

  Now, if my opponent had enough money, the deal would be concluded. Unblinking, I stared at the number on my account. Do it, do it, do it!

  The chiming of the bell was music to my ears. The numbers flashed, changing. I had three hundred fifty thousand gold in my account. Three. Hundred. Fifty. Thousand. Plus change.

  Choking with hysterical laughter, I scrambled down from the couch and turned off the auction interface, then spent a few minutes guffawing, my face buried in the soft carpet, and bumping my fist against the floor. Thank God nobody could see me at that moment. It was the pure exhilaration after a hard-won battle.

  The Magister’s epic recipes. Dragon Blood. Two hundred and fifty thousand gold of net profit. Ladies and gentlemen, masters of alchemy and Bazaar business sharks, meet Cat!

  I liked Sphere more and more. And above all else, nobody could figure out my nickname. Thanks to the Diamond subscription, I was completely anonymous, my nickname displayed as a series of question marks. Three hundred fifty thousand gold was a big enough sum to attract unwanted attention.

  My eyes fell on the flashing icon of an envelope against the half-translucent interface, indicating new mail. I opened the message and raised an eyebrow, surprised. The author was a player whom I had never heard about before.

  Chapter 9

  The Bazaar, Seventeenth Tower, VIP Apartment

  Joker: Hi. My congratulations. It was an elegant job.

  HotCat: Thank you, I guess. What are you talking about?

  Joker: About your blood scheme. Actually, many of us expected you to buy out everything, why didn’t you?

  HotCat: I don’t get it, what blood?

  Joker: Oh stop it, we’ve weighed you up and found you light enough. Do you want to know what gave you away?

  HotCat: ...

  Joker: It’s simple. The forum messages were under one nickname, but the recipe and the elixirs were sold by a hidden seller. It gave us pause. The other red flag was another hidden nickname actively buying dragon blood. That was a major alarm.

  HotCat: So what does it have to do with me?

  Joker: Moving on. It’s a new active player whom we don’t know. Hidden nickname means Diamond account, but you can’t hide clan data. All achievements are up for viewing. Five minutes ago, Russian clan “Watchers” got a new “Wolf”. That’s a strange coincidence, considering right at that time, a large batch of blood got sold for an inflated price, don’t you think? After that, it’s obvious. The Watcher’s clan trader is HotCat. Kill rating shows he’s Diamond. Divination shows HotCat’s in Seventeenth Tower of the Bazaar.

  I checked the system tray. True, euphoric after winning the battle of wills, I hadn’t noticed the series of new achievements:

  You made a major transaction, selling items worth more than 300,000 gold in one deal!

  Achievement unlocked: Merchant Prince! You receive 10,000 XP!

  You increased your funds more than five times in one deal! (Only sums exceeding 50,000 are taken into consideration).

  Achievement unlocked: Wolf of Bazaar! You receive 50,000 XP! You receive 1 free attribute point!

  Details of the latest achievement: epic, you were the 124,547th player to get it, displayed in the clan achievement list...

  HotCat: Amazing deduction. How did you catch the clan achievement?

  Joker: It’s my job. As for the achievement, there’s a special site showing such stuff live. It comes in handy.

  Joker: So anyway, why didn’t you buy out all the lot? Please satisfy my professional curiosity.

  HotCat: It would be too ham-fisted. And I sensed a catch, too. I think that if I bought everything, you’d never let me sell it for a good price.

  Joker: Yes, lots of us held back their blood to fight over purchasing lots. That was a stylish job, selling everything at the peak price. Kudos.

  Joker: I invite you to join the Shadow Guild.

  HotCat: What?

  Joker: It’s an unofficial community of Bazaar traders. Not everyone, of course, only the best. There aren’t too many of us there. You’ll be the ninety-eighth.

  Interesting... Going by the available information, Joker himself was a member of NAVY, a large American coalition, and not a foot soldier, either. What did he want from me?

  After a series of questions, I found out that the Guild was basically just a
chat, and many of its members had never seen each other. It was used to exchange news, discuss the market, inform about the most profitable deals or warn about scams. Joining it didn’t automatically impose any obligations, while knowing the business sharks of Bazaar could be very useful in the future. Interesting... The only thing I didn’t like was how quickly Joker had found me and how easily he had invited me into an elite club.

  HotCat: I have a question. Why me? Is getting into your community that easy?

  Joker: Two reasons. First, I trust my intuition. Second, you were recommended by our mutual acquaintance.

  HotCat: A mutual acquaintance?

  Joker: Guess who.

  * * *

  Dorsa, Condor, the castle of the Watchers.

  “To Helt Akor? In a raid?” Abbot, the Watchers’ vice leader of PvE, winced. “Are you serious, HotCat?”

  His look seems to imply, if it were my call, you wouldn’t be here at all.

  “I looked at your profile,” he continued. “Six thousand SP, most of them in trade. It’s ridiculous, Cat. I don’t get why you were even invited into our clan, considering your data.”

  True, I had enrolled into the academy and then the clan itself by pulling strings. The minimum requirement for joining was ten thousand SP, meaning three or four months of playing. I, as well as Ivan and Maria, had been accepted thanks to a personal permission of the Keeper Council and AlexOrder’s recommendation. Still, we had passed the exam fair and square!

  “Of course, you have your miracle sword,” Abbot continued. “But I also heard that using it might be dangerous. The admins could remove the loot — hasn’t it already happened once?”

  “That was dealt with. It won’t happen again.”

  Abbot shrugged.

  “One day it’s one thing, then another,” he said. “Just imagine, we find a nice spot in the Paths, farmed it up, you killed the boss with your imba blade, we got a legendary item. First, it could be taken by the admins, and second, it would be broken, and fixing a legendary is neither cheap nor easy, it’s a story in itself! So just scram.”

  “You mean there’s no way I could get there? All I need is to go with you until I reach a certain place inside the Paths.”

  “HotCat, for the raid, you’re nothing but dummy weight. You can’t even wear Estel gear, your skills are too low. The level of Dread inside Helt Akor is three to five points! Stop messing about, go level up.”

  So that’s how it was. I went out into the clan hall courtyard, thinking. The Watchers didn’t want to take me to the Endless Paths, and all my attempts to find another “train” to get there were just as unsuccessful. Nobody wanted to take a useless noob into the challenging dungeon network, even for a large sum of money. I had spent the last few days studying that subject. My conclusions were disappointing.

  When first I started looking for the way into Dagorrath, I tried the simplest version — going through thirty portals. I lost an entire day, wasted several thousand gold on tokens, and died three times. Just as I had suspected, in the worlds controlled by Pandorum’s vassals, my status as their enemy made movement impossible. I was killed in the second to last world, where players constantly caged several portal circles. I had only one option left: go through the dungeons of Helt Akor.

  The Endless Paths were a tangled web of ever-changing instances linking together almost all of the worlds of Sphere. Entering them via portal magic on Teleportation Scrolls was impossible: you could get there only old-style, by walking. Thing is, the Paths were always in flux: the spots transformed and disappeared, the routes shifted, and new “random encounters” got generated. Your raid might find a burrow leading into ancient tombs, but the next day, it would change into a cave full of flesh-eating plants, and so on. There were a few islands of stability, however: the anchor locations inhabited by strange NPC factions. If I found my way there, I could use a Soul Stone to bind myself to one of those spots. Most raids, if they made it to such a place, set up a permanent base there and tried going as deep as possible, completing super hard quests and exploring new instances. Equipment dropped in Helt Akor was some of the finest in Sphere, comparable to loot from the Astral Plane.

  In addition to the mobs, you could always meet other players — and such meetings didn’t always turn out well for both groups. Battles, deaths, and items dropped in the gloomy passages of Helt Akor were the main subjects of many pain-filled messages on the Sphere of Worlds official forums.

  All right, then. Finances were no longer a problem. I needed to take a break from stock markets, so I wouldn’t draw any unwanted attention, especially since my head was spinning from all those graphs, statistics, and websites used to appraise and calculate craft cost. Yesterday, trying to milk the hype around the elixir’s components for all it was worth, I had accidentally lost ten thousand gold simply because I was too exhausted and missed a digit in a number. A shame, but it was my own fault. Trading requires a fresh mind, and I was all out of breath.

  The recipe of Tincture of Fire, by the way, had been bought for three thousand gold. Soon, the market was flooded with its copies, allowing to brew ten, twenty, a hundred potions, and after that, other elixirs from the Order’s reward line followed its steps. The players needed only a few days to reach the Order and start advancing reputation with the Magister’s faction. Professional reputation farmers really were...something. I was happy I had managed to make a killing in due time — from then on, the ingredient price would only drop, until it finally stabilized, finding its niche.

  * * *

  Eyre. Home, sweet home. I thought about visiting Weldy and getting the remaining Tincture. Plus, the shopkeeper had wanted to talk to me about something.

  The store was in place, as was the girl. Weldy was reading a fat manuscript covered with drawings of plants, tracing the lines with her fingers, sometimes blowing off an unruly strand of her blond hair, which looked pretty funny.

  “Oh, look who decided to pay us a visit, Frederic,” she said, smiling and patting the black cat lying on the counter. “Isn’t it Sir Cat?”

  The girl was glad to see me, but I noticed a smidge of concern on her face. Something was clearly bothering her. Taking her hands into mine, my voice strict, I told her to come clean.

  “Oh, Sir Cat... I feel really bad asking you for this, but could you loan me some money?” she said, avoiding my gaze, clearly perturbed. “Say...one hundred and fifty gold? I know it’s a large sum, but I need to pay the tax for keeping the store...”

  After I got Weldy talking, I learned that the magic shop was on the brink of collapse. It used to be owned by the late court mage, the girl’s uncle. Until his death, he had provided the shop with scrolls and potions crafted by him, some of them in demand. Currently, Weldy had sold out all remaining stock, and the shelves were empty. Her customers left in droves, and all attempts to find new suppliers failed.

  Apparently, the entire inheritance of her mage uncle had burned in the tower together with him. Weldy had received only the shop, the goods, and bills for the alchemical ingredients, spending all her earnings to pay off the debts. She had no idea what to do.

  “I can brew simple elixirs, non-magical ones,” she said quietly. “But who needs them, anyway...”

  That was true. NPC shops weren’t especially popular with the players, as most of their stock could be bought directly at the auction. As often as not, one could find some curious items here and there, but the majority of NPCs’ clientele were NPCs themselves. It’s not like they could use the auction, after all!

  “I get it. I’ll lend you some money, of course. Can I help you in any other way?”

  A quest, finally! Conversations, dates, and gifts were no longer enough to increase my reputation with her; I needed a mission, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity!

  “Really?” I saw hope blossoming in her green eyes. “You could help me?”

  You are offered a quest: Business Plan for Weldy.

  Prevent Weldy Nialit’s magic shop from goin
g bankrupt. Help find customers and suppliers. Make the store profitable.

  Reward: XP, reputation, (varies).

  Completion time: 7 days

  “Of course I can!” And I accepted the quest. It seemed to be just in line with my skills, great.

  The whole endeavor was easy as pie, considering my background: all I had to do was to connect the customer with the seller. I decided not to put it off.

  First, I needed a contractor, a master herbalist with their own lab, able to supply the product in large quantities. There were five of them in Eyre, but in the end, I settled on an old and annoying herb-wife from Davna, referred to me by her son-in-law, who owned a glassblowing shop. Turned out, they had a family business, starting with herb gathering and ending with attaching tags to potion vials. Just what I needed.