The Auction, Part 5

"As our next item, the Minecrawler King's blood! We have here five buckets of it!" the auctioneer announced.

Woooooo!

People cheered when they heard the amount of blood on sale.

"We will have a bid for each bucket separately! Two hundred and fifty gold is the starting price, let's begin!"

Ooooooh!

Many made disappointed sounds when they heard the price. Some people of the lower standing hoped they could buy a small vial, but apparently, this was not possible.

The Minecrawler King was a powerful beast and even just a vial of blood would have great effects on a mortal body if it was consumed. Unfortunately, it seemed that the Auction House wanted to sell it in bulk since they had so much. They didn't want it to go bad, after all.

"Three hundred!"

One of the first ones to bid was the Elder Balin from the Magic Academy. They needed good quality blood for writing Runes that would be at the final test for their students. They would have to make their own basic Runestones after all.

"Three hundred and thirty!"

"Three-fifty!"

"Three…"

The price slowly rose, and many rich and powerful noble families tried to outbid each other. The blood of such a powerful monster was rare, especially one that started evolving to the Fire Element.

Gerald sighed when watching the valuable liquid exchange hands. He regretted, now more than ever, not collecting more blood from the Queen when he had the chance.

"I let such a treasure go… Sigh! I was truly a swine unable to recognize the value of the pearls in front of me!"

After the five buckets of blood were sold for approximately five hundred gold coins each, it was finally time for the King's Core. A beautiful dark-brown melon-sized crystal with bright-red lines inside it.

The Magma Core – a name given to it because of its molten rock-like appearance.

The Auctioneer moved the crystal, showing that it was cracked into five pieces. "Unfortunately during the extraction, the Core cracked into five pieces… That's also one of the reasons we decided to sell the blood in five separate batches. It will be the same with the Core! Although broken, its value is unchanged! We will start the bid with the smallest piece, five hundred gold coins!"

He lifted the beautiful chunk and showed it to the audience. Many sighed at the beauty in his hands, but only a few could ever think of owning it.

The Core was of medium-grade and the fist-sized chunk alone had more than 600 MP! The starting price was quite cheap in that regard.

Each higher grade of the Ether Crystal was ten times more expensive than the last, and it was all because of how much energy small pieces could hold.

The wolves Gerald killed at the beginning had tiny Cores of poor quality and were worth only a few silver coins each. Then there was still the low-grade, being worth at least ten times more, and then the medium-grade, being worth ten times higher than that.

It was basically an exponential increase in energy density and price.

The bidding soon reached a height of a thousand gold where it stopped.

The rest of the Core pieces reached a similar price, with the bigger ones being sold for a few hundred more.

The buyers were the same people that bought the blood in the first place. They were all immensely rich and influential, from noble families, powerful merchants, and even greater organizations, such as the Magic Academy and Ring of Water.

The auction for the Minecrawler King's body chunks ended just like that. Sandor nodded with satisfaction and gestured the assistant to bring the next item.

The man brought him a golden plate with three triangular spikes that came out from around the middle part.

Straining his eyes to see, Gerald observed the item on display carefully. He felt it was something special.

The plate was full of runes and it was clear that it was an object of great value. A few important figures already stood up and leaned forward on the balcony from their private rooms.

"I believe I don't have to explain much about this thing…" Sandor calmly said. "It is a Recharge Plate for any and all magic treasures with five times the recharge rate! The beginning price is seven hundred! The minimum bid is fifty! Let's begin!"

As you would expect, a massive bidding war took place for the Recharge Plate. But that was completely normal, after all, it was the only way for mages to quickly recharge their jewelry and magic equipment.

Listening to the price raise to two thousand in a matter of minutes, Gerald quietly sighed and shook his head. Some people really had too much money.

An item like this was not for just anyone, especially since its value would only be paid off after decades of use. Rich mages had enough money to simply buy another set of equipment as a backup, they didn't need to wait for it to recharge itself.

The Recharge Plate was more of a status symbol, only the most wealthy could buy it.

Alchemist Adhbrew also seemed uninterested in the object as only rare herbs and potions could ignite a fire in his heart in his old age.

"Okay, now that that's behind us…" Sandor spoke after the item was sold, "We will be selling a special item."

He opened his Golden Space Pouch and took out a book.

"This is a copy of an ancient scroll that the Ring of Water found when clearing the ruins in the swamps to the south! I'm sure some of you still remember the things that happened a few decades ago, after the last war with the Empire."

"Anyway, the Ring of Water spent a lot of resources and manpower, but they were unable to translate that scroll. It is because of the language that was never before seen in our world! After failing to make any sense of this thing, they decided to sell a copy in hopes that someone might find a clue to this ancient knowledge!"

The auctioneer lifted the book for all to see and scrolled through it. It was nothing special, the pages were filled with lines and symbols, but nobody had any clue as to what they meant.

However, when Gerald saw the big words on the front page, he trembled. Although he was quite far and wasn't sure if he saw it right, he became visibly excited.

"I need to get that book!" He clenched his fists and stared at the stage below with determination.