The Annual Auction (Part 1)

With her spatial ring being a lot more empty now, Luna walked out happily, putting the VIP seller token of the Alchemy Guild in her ring and went to a nearby bank, to put her 13 gold coins and 80 silver coins that were still in the money pouch the shopkeeper gave her, so that she won't be carrying any money on her anymore. After putting the rest of her money into her black card, Luna left to find an inn, as the Annual Auction wasn't until tomorrow night. Finding an inn that didn't look too expensive, but at the same time, wasn't too shabby either, she got a room on the second floor of the inn, Luna then went in and after touring the room a bit, she had a shower. She'd been travelling for a week already, and even if she was a dragon, she still smelled bad. Luckily, since she had been in her dragon form the whole time when she was travelling, so her hair wasn't oily, as the inn didn't have any shampoo or anything like that.

After taking a shower and putting on the clothes that had came with her humanisation skill, Luna realised that she basically had nothing like clothes or accessories, so after asking directions to some nearby shops, she locked her room and there. Sitting in a restaurant, Luna was fanning herself with the new pale blue fan with white lotus's on it, which had caught her eye when she was out shopping. Happily eating the food in front of her, she was completely exhausted from shopping. After shopping, she'd bought a lilac-coloured dress and a silvery white dress that matched her hair, along with some pyjamas. She'd also bought some basic accessories such as a jade mirror, a hairbrush and a few books, as she was a complete bookworm in her old life. She had first discovered the public library when she was looking for places that were warm, and soon got obsessed in reading. After finishing her meal, Luna went back to the inn, now with a lot less money.

Without even realising it, at around 2am, her [Humanisation] skill levelled up to level 2, since she'd been in her human form the whole day. The next day, she was woken up by the noises on the streets. Looking out the window, she saw lots of brightly decorated stalls selling various interesting-looking objects, such as potions or elixirs, books, pills, martial art techniques, weapons and even lower tiered armaments. Naturally, they were all not as good as the ones that were going to be auctioned later on in the evening, but there were still some good stuff. So, after changing into her lilac dress, Luna went downstairs to view the stalls. After an hour of aimlessly searching for anything that looked interesting, she'd finally found something. It was a martial art technique called 'One with the Wind', and after flipping through it a bit, she found out that the technique was to make ones speed swift and fast, making it seem as if you were moving along with the wind.

The beginning steps were based on the wind, which was about controlling the wind currents to boost yourself first. Then after getting a decent amount of control with wind, you could finally learn how to be move with the wind. "If you're interested in that technique, why not buy it?" A old woman came out the flapping at the end of the stall. "How much does it cost?" Luna enquired. She wasn't going to buy it at first, but after flipping through the technique, she could tell that it was a pretty high level technique that was focused on speed and agility, which was her current focus right now, seeing she had her [Moon Dance] skill, which was also agility based.

"5 gold coins." The shopkeeper replied.

"5 gold coins? It's such a useful technique, why is it so cheap?"

"There isn't many wind based qi cultivators, and most of them won't buy a random technique found in a lower class shop, so I've been getting a bit desperate to sell it, as I've had it for 6 years already."

"I see, I'll buy it then," and after handing the old lady the gold coins, Luna left the shop.

Seeing there was still some time before the auction, she went back to her room to practise the technique. As she had a skill that literally let her shot fire from her mouth, fire should be one of the elements that she can use, but since she should be able to use wind to fly and such, Luna supposed that wind might work for her too. Of course, it was all a guess, but she won't know unless she tried. After struggling for half an hour, she was finally able to control a wisp of wind to make it move around a bit, which was the first step in 'One with the Wind', after that, you were meant to condense the wind into a ball and be able to move around her body, but after seeing that just controlling that tiny wisp of wind was hard enough, Luna decided to give up on that for now and to focus on levelling up her skills first.

With her [Dragon Breath] being level four, which was the highest level she had right now, excluding the skill shop skill, which was already max levelled when she first got it, only her [Greater Flight], [Hide] and [Humanisation] skills were at level 2, while the others were still at level 1. Leaving the city, and going a nearby forest, which was the place where she'd slept last night, Luna went father in and turned into her dragon form. Deciding to active her [Scratch] skill first, along with [Dash], Luna ran around the forest while using her claws to scratch any tree or beast she saw. If the beast was at a higher level, Luna would just use her [Dragon Breath] or [Tail Whack] to either roast them or whack like a punching bag.

After a few hours of levelling up her skills, Luna got all her skills except for [Night Vision] up to level 5. The reason was, it was still in the afternoon, so it wasn't dark at all, so her [Night Vision] was useless. She'd practised [Moon Dance] on some random tiger mutants and although the skill wasn't able to do any damage, and it took a lot of stamina to maintain, it worked quite well, seeing that the tigers weren't able to do any damage to her. After getting the skill to level 5, Luna then used some of her other skills and finished off the 5 uncommon-grade tigers, eating the meat. By the end of her 'training', Luna had levelled up to level 7 and after turning back to human, which made her [Humanisation] skill go up to level 3, she left the forest. Suddenly, the quest function, which she hasn't heard from for a long time already, suddenly sounded.

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Quest:

Buy an item to aid your fire element

Rewards: 5 levels, 20 stat points, 15 skill points

Difficulty: Hard (Requires a large sum of money)

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"Oh? New quest? Haven't had that in quite a while. But the difficultly is hard.. so it'll probably be very hard. Except for the fact that I just got 6 JADE SPHERES yesterday by literally just selling herbs. I was going to go to the auction anyways, and since it's around the time that the auction starts, I guess I'll go there then." Saying that, Luna made her way out of the forest and into the city again. After asking some instructions for where to go, she quickly finally found the auction house. The building was huge, towering over the other shops and stalls. It was grand, made out of white marble with a red carpet stretching in. When she entered the lobby, she went straight to a receptionist, and to her pleasant surprise, the receptionist was actually nice!

"Hello! Welcome to the auction house! Do you have an existing ticket?"

"Erm, no?"

"Would you like to buy one? The general attendance is 5 silvers, but, you can't bid, only watch. The first level is the normal seating place, which cost 5 gold coins. The second level is the more expensive place, where you can sit in your own room and view the auction from a higher viewpoint, which counts 100 gold coins, and third floor is reserved for VIPs."

"Oh, then get me a normal ticket." Since she was only here to look for some interesting items, and to buy something that'll boost her fire power, she really didn't need to spend more money than necessary. Handing the receptionist the 5 gold coins, she took the ticket and went to the seating area, following the massive sign pointing to the first level. There was quite the number of people sitting there, most of them wearing formal clothing. She could also see the rooms when she looked up, with the lower rooms being the second level rooms and the top-most rooms being the VIP rooms. Sitting down, she took out a random book from her spatial ring and started reading. After a few minutes of waiting, the lights suddenly went out and all the chatter stopped, and Luna put her book back into her ring.