17 Ch. 15- Mr. Money Bags (1/2)

Today is finally Saturday, the day of the auction, and not just any auction, but the international auction that occurs once a month. This auction is huge and has far more stringent requirements to enter, not to mention the higher price tags on items, I'm afraid that if this was my first auction I might not have been able to afford anything worth buying.

I hurriedly put on my best clothes and check for any stray dirt or stains on them, luckily keeping my clothes in storage prevents anything happening to them as soon as they are stored. Putting on my best clothes is to give as good of an impression as I can, social standing may not play a super important role in today's society, but there is no point in looking like a bum and closing off potential avenues to yourself.

To finish off the outfit I take out my old wolf coat and wear it over my shirt, luckily it didn't get damaged during the few times I used it and looks fairly respectable, plus I was looking for any excuse to wear it again.

Kissing Mira on the cheek and saying goodbye to her as I rush out the door, I begin heading towards the city center in order to secure a seat before the masses begin pouring in even if it means waiting longer.

The auction house can only hold so many people, and once the seats are full no others are admitted unless they have a special invitation, which only the wealthiest or strongest summoners receive. They try to combat the number of people entering the auction house by setting the admittance price at 500 credits rather than the usual 100, at this point I have no trouble paying that amount with much more leftover in my account.

Crossing down the street I see a middle-aged and balding vendor selling wonderful smelling croissants and go to buy two of them for myself, both of mine are chocolate filled and I enjoy the indulgently sweet and flaky pastry as I continue on my way.

By the time I get to the auction around 10 AM with two hours to go till the auction officially begins, there is already a line formed of people eagerly waiting to enter the special auction.

Most people are let through, but there is the occasional unlucky person who seems to not have known about the price hike of the admission, they are left to walk away ashamed at getting turned away at such a public venue full of prominent people.

I don't really pay much mind to all of this going around me and after getting in line I begin to daydream about all of the possible things that will be for sale or I could buy. From what I've heard tier 3 items are the cheapest things sold and the auction focuses on selling either extremely rare, powerful, or useful items, bodies, cores, weapons, and accessories.

I get to my seat and begin to wait for the auction to start rather than mingling with strangers that I don't know nor do I care to know most of them. I'm surprised to learn that rather than having the physical items present for the auction, since it is, after all, an international auction full of rarities from across the continent, the items are shown as a hologram on stage for people from all over to bid on.

They begin the auction with lower-tier cores and after finding nothing that particularly interests me or that I'm willing to spend money on, I tune out the announcer until he moves on to the armor. What really catches my attention after a seemingly endless supply of tier 3 armor that was of decent quality but nothing special, is the sale of a fire-wyrm hide set.

Wyrms are around the top of the tier 3 monster food chain, so its armor would be exceptional especially with the fire-resistant effect as a result of its elemental alignment. I decide to upgrade my current tier 2 armor with a far better top of the tier 3 category set that has an elemental resistance effect as well.

I begin to bid fervently as soon as the announcer starts the bidding at 500 credits, not caring for the price I continue to raise it despite the disgruntled looks from a few of my competitors. Eventually, I manage to win it after placing a bid of 1,820 credits for the extravagant armor, the only reason I was able to win this set at this type of auction was that it was of a lower-tier than most of the richer people attending would want to buy.

Even then, the extravagant price in the quadruple digits was making my heart hurt despite still having more than enough to buy other items. Now really wasn't the time to hold back on potentially life-saving items due to price, it wouldn't matter how much money you had saved up if you weren't alive to spend it.

It seemed they were going by item type rather than tier like normal, as increasingly extravagant armors were being shown off and bought for extravagant prices, there was even at the end of the armor auction a few sets of tier 5 dragonhide armor made from the same dragon for around 100,000 credits.

There seemed to be something special about the dragon they were made from, but it was so out of reach for me that I didn't bother to pay attention to it any further than staring at the extravagant looking scaled armor and the giant price tag underneath it.

After those pricy pieces were sold off through vigorous bidding wars for each one, it was time for the weapons to be rolled out.

I was especially excited for this as I felt that Jareth was growing strong enough to handle more than one weapon and with the four-armed hobgoblin core I fed him, my hope was that he would be able to handle even more or at least swing each with the full force of a two-armed being.

Like usual, the beginning weapons were brought out and aside from them being tier 3, there wasn't anything terribly special about them. Only when it continued to progress further and pseudo tier 4 weapons were brought out did I being to pay attention.

A few gimmicky type weapons like a taser sword made from the tail of a socket lizard, and an exploding boomerang of all things made from a charge beetle that acted like an IED and would suicide bomb anything threatening their queen.

These seemed cool, but not worth spending money on as they didn't suit me at all, one thing I've taken away from summoner school was our old weapons teacher telling us that the best weapon wasn't necessarily the most powerful, but the one that suited us most.

Anyways, I wasn't buying a weapon for myself, but for Jareth and he was the type to use heavy weapons. What eventually caught my eye was a special Warhammer that had the added feature of increasing or lowering gravity for a second at a time, which was plenty enough to do some serious damage by activating right before impact.

It was made from a fusion of platinum veins running through a large grey bone from a density mammoth, the platinum came to a point at the top of the hammer with little spikes studded out from the largest and heaviest part of each face of the hammer.

The vision of Jareth spinning like a top with his iron mace in one hand and the Warhammer in the other crushing everything within reach was too powerful to deny and so I began to furiously bid for the weapon.

It seems I wasn't the only one to sense the potential of the weapon, as I got into a fierce bidding war with a 40-year-old man who looked like he had enough muscles in his arms to crush a steel ingot with his bare hands.

Eventually, I won the bidding war by paying 3,050 credits, the older man seemed especially heartbroken at losing out on such a wonderful weapon, but it seemed like he was saving his money for something even better since he gave up despite probably having more funds judging by his apparent strength.