Jjhutto_Son of Flame
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B3. Ch. 32 Rags and Riches
🕑 Added 2024-08-29 13:37:24 +0000 UTCSuddenly the Auctioneer was in the midst of the scene, layers of cloth surrounding the attacker before he could even shout in surprise. The apparent leader of the Auction House then gestured with their other hand, and the space around the knife in the Orc’s chest began to fold in on itself. 2-D planes of existence collapsed on themselves all around the cursed weapon until it and a healthy portion of the orc's rib cage had been compressed to the size of a pin head, before popping out of existence.
“ARG! Snot-nosed brat!” The Orc bellowed, getting to his feet and brandishing a huge axe that was equal parts jagged bone and screaming metal. The hole in his chest bled freely, but the wound didn’t seem to impede the warrior at all.
The Auctioneer was one step ahead of him, his voice tearing through Tilly’s mind in its fury, “This is not what I meant when I asked for drama Curufin. For this transgression, the Endless Pursuit Faction is forever banned from this hall and dealings with the Auction House. I hope it was worth it.”
A muffled scream sounded from beneath the cloth that had mummified the attacker before the whole figure under the supernaturally elongated sleeve seemed to collapse into nothingness, leaving only a pile of the Auctioneer’s supernatural sleeves behind. The orc growled in fury, swiping at the pile of cloth as his attacker disappeared, but there was nothing to hit with his impressive axe.
In a much more normal voice, the Auctioneer tsked in feigned concern, as they turned and bowed to the furious orc “My dear guest, it wounds me far more than it does you, to see a guest treated so in my halls. Take this pittance of a sum as an apology from our House.” they said, pulling back the pile of cloth from where Curufin had once stood to reveal a chest of coins.
Most of the rest of the representatives had already cleared the room, and the guild workers were almost done removing the tables and dishes as if nothing had happened. Tilly marveled at the wound in the Orc’s chest which had already begun visibly closing, “Ha! Forgiven, Whisperer! Easiest money I have ever made” The orc bellowed, laughing as his internals disturbingly shifted along with his barking.
“Happy to be of service,” the Auctioneer whispered, back still bowed. The orc bent down to touch the mound of financial compensation and the whole thing disappeared. Tilly glanced at his world ring and wondered if he had just witnessed its capabilities. The orc’s tusked smile grew as he read a notification on the amount received, and without another word, he straightened and strutted happily back to the stairway leading up to his booth.
The Auctioneer spun in place causing their many layers to fan out around them, before forming a vortex that pulled their whole body into a central point. Then they were across the room, standing on the stage again, “Powers and representatives! Now that we have dealt with that minor distraction, let us get on to business.”
Another Cartographer’s Guild map was produced, which did, in fact, sell for more than the first, then they brought out several more items which were each very powerful, but all in selective situations, none of which seemed useful for him or the Alliance. That all changed when the next item came out.
“Ah, now here is an interesting little trinket a friend of ours picked up in the deep desert,” the Auctioneer tittered while a mechanical scarab beetle crawled out of one of their voluminous sleeves and up onto their shoulder.
“We are calling it a Temporal Beetle and according to our best scholars, it has the ability to reset one timer on the effect of almost any other item. The delay being reset cannot be greater than a day, and it cannot be an item that is ingested. The Temporal Beetle will be destroyed upon its use, but I think the effect could be very valuable to some of you in this room. We will begin the bidding at ten thousand.”
Tilly’s hand shot to the crystal, and put his flag in the running with about twenty others. He was sure many in the room had powerful items, but to have them narrowed down to a day cool-down had to narrow the playing field significantly, didn’t it?
“Twenty,” the Auctioneer continued.
All the flags matched the price rise.
“Oho! Cheeky today? Try fifty!”
Three-quarters of the flags fell away.
“Will this work with whatever strategy you employed against the Alliance’s new guest?” Mochizuki asked curiously.
“It should be perfect for me in emergencies. Giving me another use of what is probably my most powerful capability so far.”
“Sixty.” The Auctioneer giggled.
Three flags rose with the number. Tilly’s dragon, a rainbow infinity sign, and a mountain.
“Seventy.”
They all rose.
“Eighty.”
Again they all matched the bid to the sound of Mochizuki’s furious scratching in the Codex and Tilly’s thunderous heartbeat.
“My goodness, some of you must be sitting on some truly extraordinary items, ninety!”
Tilly’s flag wobbled uncertainly as he hit the limit of his finances before Mochizuki’s voice came to bolster its ascent, “Mr. Tillman, you may use Alliance funds for this as a loan, you are about to make more gold anyway.”
His flag had begun to fall along with his retreating mana, but at her words he desperately shoved more back into the crystal, causing the flag to surge with rising energy to meet its competitor. He was not the only one who had balked at the new price. In its resumed rise, Tilly’s flag passed the rainbow infinity flag slowly drifting down.
“Oh my. Looks like you almost had it Anonymous Mountain. But the hesitant dragon found its courage. Ninety-five!”
“Do you think it is worth this? It's only a single use,” Tilly shot over to Mochizuki.
“Will its use save your life or give you extra power?”
“It will do either, but I will likely only use it if I am about to die.”
“Ninety-seven,” the Auctioneer continued after a slight dramatic pause.
“Then it is very much worth it for you and your Faction,” she replied with a definitive nod of her head.
Tilly's flag rose in response, matched by the mountain.
“Ah, I tire of this… Can either of you stomach one hundred and one thousand gold?”
Tilly had no clue what the best strategy would be here. Should he immediately soar up, displaying confidence and commitment, or should he trail his competitors to make them think they had almost won each time? Probably something he should have asked about earlier…
As his flag rose slowly to meet the new price the mountain flag hesitated, rising halfway, “Oh, come now! Make up your mind you dithering cowherd. Do you want this item or not?” the Auctioneer spat, suddenly vehement.
In silent shame, the flag hung there for a moment more, before beginning its long journey back to the arena floor.
“Finally! Temporal Beetle has sold for one hundred and one thousand gold.”
Tilly felt the life drain out of him as his flag also fell. To go from filthy rich to dirt poor in the space of an hour was a journey he had not been mentally or emotionally prepared for.
“Our next item is a treat and another first for our House! Even better, it is another set of 100.” The Auctioneer whisper-shouted to the crowd, lifting their arms as the small chest rose up from the floor of the stage. They then took two definitive steps toward the chest and flung it open, revealing pointed, crystalline objects, half the size of Tilly’s hand.
“That's Right! Our dragon glass supplier is not done yet! You have before you one hundred dragon glass arrowheads. They carry no enchantment, and are ready for whatever little surprises your best enchanters can add to them! I am told they do come with one bonus that increases the drama of our current conflict deliciously. There is a blessing on each arrowhead from a being that calls itself Origin. The blessing will cause whatever damage it issues against a Corrupted foe, to be increased by 200%...” The Auctioneer delivered dramatically, nodding along to the silent room as if the crowd had just gone wild.
“I know… I know. The plot thickens. It looks like our ‘New World Order” Isn’t going to have an uncontested rise after all. Just who is this Origin? I haven’t heard of them, have you? I will say this, one of these arrowheads, properly prepared, would be a danger to all but the strongest creatures…and ten of them targeted at a single opponent? Well, I think even some of our honored Fallen Princes would need to be wary, don't you?” The whispery voice crooned mischievously.
“How did we forge so many?” Tilly blurted to Mochizuki's satisfied smile.
“We worked out a deal with the Church. They have loaned us a master Barbaraen Smith, who has been working day and night to figure out how to forge the material after it is cast into an ingot. She gets to keep half of what she makes, and we the other half. She is even train-”
“So, my honored guest, who will purchase these little instruments of death? Will they be snapped up by the Factions who stand in the way of Corruption’s rise? Or will this emerging force flex its financial muscle and buy them just to spit in the eye of its doomed opponents? I can’t wait to see! Bidding starts at fifty thousand!
Flags rose all around the room.
…
A few tumultuous minutes later the arrowheads sold for the dizzying amount of seven-hundred and fifty thousand gold. The numbers were changing so fast that Tilly finally gave up and helplessly looked over at Mochiuki as she worked out the numbers after the conclusion of the bidding.
“The guild takes their fifteen percent… then you get ten percent… then you pay us back.” She muttered as she scratched through the math before looking up with a beaming smile, “Mr. Tillman, you now have forty-five thousand six hundred and thirty-nine gold accredited to you after repaying your small loan, this leaves the Alliance with well over a million gold having passed through our accounts today. We have just achieved one of our most important goals for today; Securing the last Faction advancement required besides your divine mission.”
“Well done, Honored Guests! What an exciting day,” the Auctioneer purred like a cat having just finished its cream. Tilly had loosely tried and failed to keep a general idea of how much gold the Auction House was making on each item, but that fifteen percent added up quickly with so much money flying through the air and he had quickly given up.
“There are just a few more items before our next break and for all those interested in the coming conflict at our Plane’s center, I think you will find the next round of items to be most… stimulating.”
The auction sold off a few more powerful but specific-use items that Mochizuki only noted. They were all either too expensive to tempt Tilly or not applicable to his build. The most notable of which was a skill up scroll that would take the user to level thirty in the Skill; True Strike. Tilly bid on it for a while, but the cost quickly went into the hundreds of thousands, and he did not want to borrow from the Alliance for something that would be an awesome, but non-essential addition to his build.
“Wonderful, Honored Guests. Just wonderful. Now if you will excuse us, we have some larger items in store for the next round to prepare, please enjoy our legendary hospitality.” The Auctioneer concluded after the final sale as the streams of Auction House workers once again flowed into the room and began setting up another feast, which Tilly was interested to note was in a completely different layout from the first, with entirely new dishes being set on the tables.
“We’re up, aren’t we?” Tilly swallowed, feeling the anticipatory weight of all those being’s auras pushing in on his soul.
“Yes, we must if we are to get everything we can out of this event. I will be with you, but I am afraid I cannot help you. In fact, for me to accomplish my mission, I will need your help… are you ready?”
Tilly sighed, and stood from the comfortable leather chair, straightening his already supernaturally pressed suit jacket, and rolling his neck to try and loosen some of the tension gathering in his shoulders, “Ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s do this.“
