NOVEL NEXT Chapter 248: C Rank Auction
Krysta
“Right this way, Ma’am.”
Dressed in a beautiful emerald green gown, Krysta followed the auction house employee to one of the more expensive boxes of the Inexhaustible Heat Auction House, the largest auction venue on the main planet of one of their universe’s unaligned gods, the Lord of Sand and Sun.
As a weaker god, his main planet was only B rank, but the auction house venue was just as grand as any other Krysta had seen, if not more so, with the light in every hallway provided by true divine crystals, a structure made entirely of everwood, and tapestries created personally by one of the two living gods of weaving hung everywhere, calming the heart of anyone who entered.
There was so much wealth on display that any A rank would be moved, let alone a C rank like Krysta, but no one in their right mind would dare steal from a god, even one without a faction, with not a single thief having tried since the auction house had been built many billions of years before.
“Ms. La’Vordi, you honor me with your presence.”
After entering into the box, Yorick Strong, one of the five competing candidates to be the next head of the Quintessence Merchant Union, the main force under one of their universe’s three merchant gods, Perival, rose from where he’d been chatting with his bodyguard and bowed deeply to her, Krysta curtsying in response.
Human, he had silky black hair, dark gray eyes, and a skin tone the color of ash, his variant race specializing in the darkness element. And, different from what his name would imply, he was a physically weak individual for a C rank, barely taller than Krysta and without much muscle. But, as his class was a psyforce-based administrative one, it made no difference and he was a well known A rank talent.
Krysta had met him while acting in the role of a mercenary over the last four thousand years, and he’d been romantically pursuing her since he’d found out her true identity, forcing Krysta to politely rebuff him multiple times, but this time, when he’d invited her to this once every 20,736 year auction, she’d actually agreed, and it was likely he’d misread the situation.
So, immediately after curtsying to him, Krysta turned toward his bodyguard and curtsied to the large man as well. “Slaughterer, it is good to see you again.”
Deimos Karan was an imposingly large human, a couple centimeters taller than even the human form balance dragon she’d known back when she was an E rank. Also known as the Rune Knight, he was a powerful C rank on the verge of advancing to B rank, with a Runic Dragon bloodline, but his fighting style of using external runic arrays to boost his combat power wasn’t what he was famous for.
Over the same period of time Krysta had been acting as a mercenary, he’d been doing the same, but, while she mostly chose who she worked for based on her own morals, the Slaughterer seemed to choose based off the intensity of combat. Were there a lull in fighting on one battlefield, he’d move to another. Were an armistice discussed, he’d move to a different galaxy cluster and join a more intense war. He was almost always fighting and, when he fought, he was the personification of death, killing every single opponent who got in his way, his most famous feats single-handedly blocking two B ranks in one war and destroying an entire army of mostly D and C ranks by himself in another.
She’d met him a few times at social events, finding him a relatively quiet and unassuming presence, and they’d never been on the same battlefield, so she’d never been able to confirm if the rumors were true.
What she did know was that Yorick had managed to hire him as a part time bodyguard, the first such offer the Slaughterer had taken, and making such a contract had increased Yorick’s standing by quite a bit among the community, allowing Yorick to start up his own mercenary company.
“Space Master.” The Slaughterer bowed slightly to her. “I wasn’t previously aware of your identity. Please forgive me for any rudeness I might have shown you before.”
The words were said, but the man’s aura was completely stable, seemingly not scared by her background at all, and Krysta got the sense he was mostly saying the words because Yorick had asked him to, which she found mildly amusing.
“You have never been rude, sir.” Krysta deliberately smiled. “And I’d rather you speak comfortably. All the formalities and unspoken expectations of talking with someone like Yorick are just exhausting.”
Krysta then moved forward, taking the leftmost of the five seats to look out the one way mirror at the stage down below, and her timing was perfect, a beautiful human woman with fiery red hair and bright green eyes coming out to smile at the thousands of people in the main hall and the hundreds in the boxes.
“Thank you, everyone, for coming today.” The master of ceremonies’ voice was melodic, traveling all over the venue due to magic, and Krysta noticed quite a few men, and even some women, showing signs of physical attraction through her sensing skill. “My name is Starflower and I will be your host this evening.”
The woman, who was wearing a green gown similar to Krysta’s own, curtsied, but the action was far more graceful than Krysta’s, and the impression was far less formal, as if this Starflower were some innocent peasant girl from the countryside and not the hired master of ceremonies for an auction where the minimum requirement for attendance was to be at least D rank and a core member of a divine rank force.
“Now, I know you are all busy people, so let’s get right to the first item up for sale.” Starflower sent a bit of mana into a runic array on the stage in front of her and a long plain black halberd suddenly appeared floating in the air above the array, teleported directly from the auction house’s vault.
“For the first item of this auction, we have an extremely rare Empyrean grade C rank artifact, the Major’s Empyrean Halberd: Wind.” Starflower took up the halberd and spun it around a couple times in a graceful manner, somehow causing all the air in the main hall to still. Then she pointed it at the audience and a terrifying aura of wind appeared, making even Krysta, whose aura had left the isolating effects of Yorick’s box, feel like she was a mortal in a hurricane.
“Most of you probably haven’t heard of the Havadim Imperium, the civilization which created this weapon, and that is to be expected as they were not a force from our universe but from another now ruled by the Lady of Laws.
“Seven trillion years ago, however, they ruled their entire minor universe, with all the faith energy of every living being going to one god, the Imperial Emperor.
“Ambitious and ignorant, the Imperial Emperor set his sights on other universes and even tried to invade our own, forcibly expanding five demiplanes connecting our universes to allow soldiers of two ranks higher than the demiplanes would normally allow to pass through, one allowing up to A ranks, two B ranks, and the last two only C ranks, but all his soldiers were killed by the subordinates of the Lady of Laws and his universe was invaded in turn. Then, several hundred billion years later, the Law Master, in one of his most impressive feats before ascending, travelled to the Imperial Emperor’s universe and killed the man as well as all the emperor’s main subordinates, taking over the universe for his mother.”
The serious expression Starflower had used when explaining this history faded and she smiled. “Now, this is just a blip in the history of the divine wars we have fought against other universes, and it is truly not that important. But what is important is one fact: the Imperial Emperor is dead, and has been for trillions of years.
“The artifacts created by his civilization, however, have survived, and, in the last thousand years, three previously hidden caches of war supplies have been found in one of the demiplanes connecting our universes, the energy supplies of the caches’ defenses finally running out.
“Brought out by E ranks traveling through the demiplane, the artifacts from these caches mostly consist of weapons, all of which had been time sealed for trillions of years, showing almost no signs of degradation whatsoever, and these weapons range from E rank and Legendary grade to C rank and Empyrean grade like this Major’s Empyrean Halberd: Wind.
“Every weapon’s craftsmanship is sublime. Every weapon’s power is immense. And their only flaw is that they require a blood oath to the Imperial Emperor in order to be used.
“But, as stated before, the Imperial Emperor is long dead, making this blood oath pointless.
“The oath does require an individual to not be part of a System approved faction for 20,736 years, taking away some of the ease of gaining faction benefits we’ve all come to enjoy, but, for the power of an Empyrean grade weapon, what is a little inconvenience? What is a little extra discomfort when a weapon like this—” Starflower swiped the halberd through the air and a wind slice flew through the auction house at a speed almost as fast as one of Krysta’s spatial slices empowered by her peak grade Law Scarab of Void Slice, the auction house’s defensive arrays having to activate to protect the private box the attack had been aimed at. “—could be yours?”
Starflower’s smile grew radiant as she let go of the halberd and let it float in the array again. “The starting price is 4 A rank universal credits and the minimum bidding increment is 1 A rank universal credit.”
“Wow.” Yorick spoke up from the middle seat, turning around to look at the Slaughterer behind him. “Do you think a C rank weapon, even one such as this halberd, is worth A rank universal credits? It seems overpriced to me.”
The Slaughterer looked contemplative for a few seconds as the halberd more than doubled in price, rising up to 10 A rank universal credits in three bids. “With such a weapon, I could likely pass two or three extra rounds in the next C rank Universal Tournament, which might allow me to make it to the final stage.”
“Oh.” Yorick turned back to the one way glass, a frown on his face as the bidding price kept rising. “My senior will be making a lot more money at this auction than I anticipated.”
