NOVEL NEXT Chapter 206: Start of the Universal Auction
Mila
“Alright. It’s time.” Nana Xara’s voice sounded more solemn than usual. “You know what to do, right?”
“Project my soul without any of my bonds attached, yes.” In contrast to Nana Xara, who seemed nervous, Mila felt excited, smiling as a result. “I don’t want to be associated with you either, Ms. Yin Yang Sage.”
“I’m being serious, Mila.” From Nana Xara’s tone, Mila could tell her teacher wasn’t joking, and her excitement about the auction which was about to start quickly faded. “This is going to be the first time I appear in public since my death. I’ll try to hide my identity, but make sure not to interact with me at all, just to be safe.”
“You think your enemies will find you?” Mila was now starting to grow nervous as well. “You haven’t told me much about your life, and the biography I read was missing a lot.”
“Yes, my enemies. And potentially some friends as well, but much, much weaker.” Nana Xara sounded more nervous than Mila had ever heard from the woman, and this was seriously starting to freak her out. “Again, just make sure not to interact with me at the auction, leaving our communications entirely to the real world.”
“Understood.” Still sitting on top of Aalam’s crafting hall, Mila took a deep breath and had one of her minds enter into the soul net. Instead of appearing inside the lobby of the United Federation of Planets’ Watchers division, however, she materialized on a seat perfectly crafted to her form inside a large private room.
The seat itself was made out of some kind of purple plant, the same as the other five chairs in the room, and this made sense as it was the private room of the Forest Cauldron for the Universal Auction. But the rest of the room had more of a medieval style, with lots of exposed stone, tapestries showing what seemed like Joma La’Vordi crafting something in a large wooden cauldron, and fancy carpets made of some kind of red grass.
The most important feature in the room, however, was the large glass window which dominated one entire wall. Transparent from only the inside, the window looked out over what appeared like an impossibly large church, bigger than most countries on Earth, with an absolute forest of chairs taking up most of its space, over a hundred billion of them at least. On one end was a large stage, but it was only about the size of a football field, incredibly tiny compared to the vastness of the room, while on the other was an absolutely massive closed door, seemingly made of some kind of wood from an absolutely humongous tree. Still, somehow, Mila was able to make out every single detail with ease.
The style of the humongous room was also medieval, with an extremely tall arched ceiling, an abundance of stone, and many massive pieces of artwork along the walls honoring their universe’s 204 living gods.
Mila was especially drawn to paintings of the two gods she was the most familiar with.
In one, Krysta’s father, Heavenly Scarab of Space Kilvorax, was in human form, looking vaguely middle-eastern with long silvery transparent hair like his daughter and her same fully black eyes, only abnormally large as well, and, unlike Krysta, he had a large black horn rising out of his forehead. He looked a lot like his eleven brothers, only with a different elemental manifestation, and it seemed all of them had modified their forms after the lord they served, the Divine Child.
Like the Heavenly Scarabs, the Divine Child in the paintings looked vaguely middle-eastern, with abnormally large eyes, but he also looked about eight-years-old, thus his name. Other than that, however, there was nothing that special about him, and, like sublime soul variant races, Mila expected that was almost certainly a sign of power and control.
Mila also looked over the depictions of the other gods, from the Divine Child’s 28 other subordinates, most unique lifeforms like the Heavenly Scarabs, to the 42 human ancestors, to the 56 gods under the Lady of Laws, an extremely ancient goddess who looked like Earth’s modern depiction of angels and who was the creator of Aalam’s Twelve Element Primal Code.
Through several huge mirrors on the walls seemingly specially designed for the purpose, she could even see the pieces of artwork which normally wouldn’t be visible to her due to the angles involved, and it took her a second to realize each mirror was in fact one of the 4,836 special windows representing the boxes of the universe’s A rank forces, like the one she was looking out of.
All in all, it was incredibly impressive, even if it was all virtual.
“Do you have any questions?” Joma La’Vordi appeared in the chair next to her and smiled. “I’ve attended two other Universal Auctions during my time as leader of the Forest Cauldron, so I can be considered at least somewhat knowledgeable.”
Mila took a second to think. She’d already had multiple conversations about the Universal Auction with her teacher, and Nana Xara had been much, much older than Joma before her death, almost two hundred million years old, so she’d been to these auctions dozens of times and there wasn’t much she didn’t know. The information Mila was missing, then, was that which directly related to Joma herself. “What do you usually do at these auctions?”
“Well, it’s been different each time.” Joma reached out her hand and paid the price of several D rank universal credits to have the System summon a virtual piping hot drink into it, some kind of chocolate-like beverage. “Every time I’ve come my social status has been different.
“The first time, I wasn’t even an A rank yet, while this time there is a pretty good chance several gods will take the initiative to visit.”
Joma took a sip of her drink. “My original plan for this auction was to buy some rare alchemy materials, resources to help with Krysta’s advancements, and anything I could get for a reasonable price from the various lists provided by my subordinates, but mostly I was going to watch and definitely not participate in the competition for any of the most expensive items.
“With your fiancé as my apprentice, however, that’s likely going to change. Just the list he provided is worth more than what I was planning to spend on Krysta.”
Mila didn’t like it much, but, in their negotiations about the Universal Auction, Joma had pretty much forced on her the identity of Aalam’s fiancée.
The alchemist had already prepared a good identity for Aalam, World Guardian, a talent from one of the universe’s most war-torn galaxy clusters who she’d found and taken as an apprentice, so it hadn’t been at all difficult for her to make another identity from the same region for Mila, Silent Snow.
Commoners in that region were generally named using words in universal common, so the names didn’t sound as odd as they would if translated into English, and the identity of Silent Snow was also the identity Mila would be using when she started hosting auctions for the Forest Cauldron after she advanced to D rank, something Joma had also insisted on in their negotiations.
Having a lot of experience with Nana Xara, Mila was pretty sure the alchemist just wanted to mess with her for fun, so she’d stopped fighting quickly, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t a little pissed off.
She would, however, play the part to the best of her abilities, and that involved acting deferential to the Alchemist of the Deep Woods, so she held back the jab which came into her mind, one that wasn’t very favorable to Krysta, and that left a pause in the conversation for several seconds.
“Oh, it seems like they’re starting.” Joma pointed toward the stage and Mila turned to look, seeing one of the three merchant gods, an independent goddess called the Mistress of Gold, looking out at everyone.
Tall and voluptuous, with violet skin, a snake tail instead of legs, and tendrils for hair, she was wearing a blue dress and an infectious smile as she began talking. “Welcome, everyone, both those who’ve come before and the many, many more for whom this is their first Universal Auction.
“I am the Mistress of Gold, Goddess of Mercantile Endeavors, and I will be your host.
“For those of you who are new here, the Universal Auction works a little differently than you might be used to. First, it lasts for a year, with continuous auctioning of items throughout the entire event. Second, while I auction off the items considered most valuable by the System, many, many, many other items will be available to bid on at the same time.
“Every day, a new list of items will be available and, through the soul net, you can personally interact with recreations of these items throughout the day. At the same time, for 24 standard hours, you’ll be able to bid on these items through the System, with the highest bid visible to all. Then, when the 24 hours are up, those who have bid the top twelve prices will be able to continue competing until no one bids for over 12 seconds, the cultivator with the highest bid at the end receiving the item.
“Now, with that, the first list of items is available for your viewing pleasure and I will start on the auction of one of the most impressive items available for this entire auction.”
As the Mistress of Gold began describing a powerful A ranked spear which appeared on the stage next to her, Mila checked the notification she now had in the corner of her vision and opened up the list of items being auctioned that day, a grand total of 91,648,441 separate units.
Almost everyone who could attend the auction was at least B rank, so it wasn’t hard for them to parse through so many items in a limited amount of time to see if they would want anything, but for Mila, as possibly the weakest participant in the entire auction, it wasn’t so easy.
Thankfully, in another box at the auction, Nana Xara was also looking through the list, and, through Mila’s connection with her in the real world, she quickly sent over a subset of items Mila might be interested in so they could discuss bidding strategies. And, at the same time, Joma sent her a list of all the items she would be bidding on as well, so they could talk before accidentally competing against each other.
