Auction, Casino, Little Girl

The huge hall was crowded with people, one by one, people dressed in dignified and luxurious clothes were walking through the hall, talking, joking and laughing. It seemed as if they were old friends who had been separated for many years, or as if they were close lovers.

But in reality, they had only known each other for less than ten minutes.

Rope and Whitley were sitting on the second floor of the restaurant, watching the crowd of people in the lobby downstairs, eating breakfast on their plates made by the ship's chef himself.

"Rope, it's not quite the state of affairs here that I thought it would be."

Whitley took a bite of this delicacy on her plate that she had never had before and then lamented.

"Like it or not?"

Rope ate her breakfast without any food, the food was indeed delicious, after all, these ingredients and the chef's prices were all over the place.

"Like the food, don't like the atmosphere."

Whitley said more or less squirming as she glanced at the waiter standing beside herself.

And just as Whitley said this, the waiter also remained motionless here, with a smile on his face like it was painted, sunny, natural, but without any activity in sight.

Seeing this, Rope reached out and waved his hand towards the waiter, signaling that the waiter could leave.

The waiter bowed towards the two men and then backed away.

Whitley felt the air around him relax a bit.

"Whew~ much more at ease."

Whitley finally had a wide smile on her face.

Rope shook his head and chuckled, "You're a little girl who can't live a good life either."

"I just don't like it when people are front and center in front of me."

Whitley took a sip of her moo-moo fresh milk from the table then said.

Rope nodded, while it was acceptable to adapt to this sort of thing, Rope was just as unlikely to be served like this all the time.

"But, Rope..." said Whitley as she glanced down at the crowd below who appeared to be eating, but were actually doing something that didn't half have anything to do with eating.

"Aren't they, uh, hungry?"

Rope flinched for a moment when she heard this, then didn't hold back a snort of laughter, luckily she had just swallowed her meal or Whitley would have to go change now.

"Hungry or not they know themselves naturally. Some people just want to eat if they don't fit in, others enjoy the atmosphere and naturally don't feel like they're hungry."

Rope took a sip of water and then smiled.

"Still don't quite understand." Whitley shook her head, communication was fine, but how could you not eat?

"That's fine, understand if you want to, don't care if you don't." Rope waved his hand absently.

Whitley nodded to signal that she knew, but mentally, she didn't even bother trying to understand either. How hard it was to fake a smile every day.

"Say, is Sister Ming really not coming to show us around today?"

"No, I told her that we'll look around by ourselves today, after all, it's not like I haven't been on this ship before, it's fine for me to show you around by myself. The two of us shouldn't be as well known as the 'Red Rose' for the time being. It's too big a target if we let her lead the way."

Rope obviously didn't want to get himself into trouble, although he was already well known in the research community, he was still a rising star after all. But Ming had been immersed in this world of fame and fortune for nearly a decade now, and none of these people in the room who were even remotely knowledgeable wouldn't fail to recognize her.

"So where are we going to play later?"

"Let's take you to see the auction house. As I recall the auction has two sessions today, one at noon and one at night."

Rope thought for a moment, then said.

"An auction? Anything good?"

Whitley raised her interest at the sound of the auction, obviously having heard great things about such things before.

"So interested?"

Rope was also quite surprised, not expecting Whitley to be so interested in this stuff.

"I've heard that there are so many precious resources in the auction, I've always wanted to go and take a look!"

Whitley's eyes shone with anticipation.

And Rope was about to say something at this point, and could only say in the middle of the day, "It's good to be interested."

After saying that, she got up, then said, "Alright, let's go then, so that you can see this so-called auction."

—————————

"Welcome the two honored guests into the auction!"

The doorway of a hall, after Rope showed his badge the attendant at the door. It was very dry to let the duo enter the hall of the auction.

"Rope, what are the things being auctioned here today?"

Whitley looked at the splendid auction hall and asked suspiciously.

"What's there I don't know, this auction at noon is for those guests who like excitement, the things to be auctioned will not be announced in advance."

Rope shook his head signaling that he didn't know either.

"The one at night will announce the auction items in advance, this noon auction is more like one for people to pick up treasures."

Whitley nodded plausibly, it was indeed her first time coming to a similar occasion.

So many things were unclear.

The duo took two steps forward, and a waiter immediately stepped forward and bowed, "The two guests, please go this way."

Rope and Whitley followed the waiter's footsteps and then headed for a private room.

"Isn't the auction in the hall?"

"Picking up treasure? Of course it's better to hide it if you want to get excited, this feeling of being in the shadows and getting rich makes a lot of people want to get rich."

Rope explained to Whitley with a shrug.

Whitley nodded, a coolness she could understand.

"You two, your compartments."

The waiter bowed again and held the door to the compartment open for Rope and Whitley, then made a please gesture toward Rope and Whitley.

Rope and Whitley looked at each other, then walked into the box together.

—————————

"Miss, this is today's auction item list."

The woman in the black suit handed Ming a list in her hand.

Ming stared at the monitor screen above with both eyes, and without looking back, she reached out her hand and took the list.

On the screen, Rope and Whitley made themselves at home in their chairs and then chatted boredly.

Ming scanned down at the contents of this auction, then immediately looked up without blinking his glasses, handed the list back to the woman in the black suit, and said, "Switch."

"Switch to what?"

"Transfer all of the ship's most precious resources, and then transfer a batch of resources from home for the evening auction."

"Yes."

The woman in the black suit didn't ask anything more, she just silently stood up and then went out to do her job.

On the other hand, a man in a captain's uniform on the other side asked doubtfully, "Missy, would it be too expensive?"

One must know that the items at noon today were precious things in themselves, and the resources at night were naturally even more precious. He hadn't even seen much of that finale's resources, but now just one auction at noon was going to bar all the resources.

This could only be described as extravagant.

But he regretted it when the words left his mouth, this kind of thing itself was not something he should interrupt.

As a captain, he was not an irreplaceable figure, and once he really upset the young lady in front of him, then he would have no place to talk about the loss of his position.

However, Ming didn't seem to care about his words, and just shook his head, whispering, "Expensive? Not really..."

I don't know if he was talking to the captain or to himself.

—————————

"Our 5th auction item today! A life orb! Able to strengthen the power of all of Pokémon's moves at the cost, simply, of the loss of stamina after each use of the skill! Starting bid 100,000!"

"150,000!"

"200,000!"

...

"Rope, what's all this stuff?"

Whitley said with a slightly odd face.

"Life orb... haven't seen them before?"

Rope asked suspiciously.

"How could I not have seen it before...isn't this thing a very common thing?" Whitley said with a frown.

Whitley was surprised, whether it was Rope's side or Professor Juniper's side, this kind of life orb was never a precious item...

However, Whitley looked around, and the people in front of him were grabbing for this item with an almost frantic expression, as if it was so precious! ...

It was important to realize that on Rope's exchange list, this kind of thing only required ten research points, and Rope was now receiving over 100 research points every month. This is still the case of Rope being lazy, but where a casual posting of two papers every month's research points have to be on the order of 500.

And Rope can exchange a dozen or so of these things every month... but they are being coaxed by these people in front of her...

"You don't think that these things are very common in the outside world, do you? "

Rope asked with a smile as he looked at Whitley with a chuckle.

"I originally thought it was something very common, but now it looks like it shouldn't be something common."

Whitley said with some hesitation.

"Do you realize now why Ming is hostile to us?"

Rope asked again.

This time Whitley didn't answer right away, but was silent for a while, then spoke:

"Because these things are actually quite precious things in Sister Ming's eyes?"

Rope smiled, then didn't respond, but said, "Ordinary flowers and trees can be easily bought by money. But things like these are no longer something that money can casually touch. That is, the legendary price without a market."

"That's why what we exchange with other fellows or high-level trainers is the resources themselves, not money."

Whitley said plausibly.

"Money really isn't worth much in the eyes of us people. not many of those collections Steven has were bought with money. So I don't really have much money on hand that I usually use..."

Rope said slowly.

"Before you touch a realm, some things are very important to you, like money."

"But at our level, money is really just dirt.Are Mega Stone and Keystone bought with money?"

Rope didn't laugh, just said flatly.

"But isn't there a Keystone strapped to Sister Ming's wrist?"

Whitley thought of the bracelet on Ming's wrist. What was set on that, was also a Keystone.

"That was from Professor Oak..."

Rope immediately responded.

That Keystone was one he had watched Professor Oak give to the former chairman of the shipping company, Ming's grandfather.

Together with that Keystone, there was also a Gyarados' Mega Stone.

He thought that since the Keystone had already reached Ming's hands, the Gyarados' Mega Stone should be in Ming's possession as well. I just don't know if she has mastered mega evolution.

And at this moment, the auction item on the stage had changed, it was Prism Scale, an item that could allow Milotic to evolve quickly, which was still rare, but this item on the research platform really wasn't that rare, and the selling price was even cheaper than the Life orb from before...

Because this item Milotic could be spawned almost every month, and in League , the number of Milotic isn't exactly small. Especially a certain gym in the Hoenn region, hating the fact that a gym was raising Milotic...

But judging from the starting price of this thing and the trend of the final final rise, it definitely didn't seem to be a simpler and cheaper racket.

"Rope, I'm suddenly feeling so bored..."

Whitley said, suddenly bored.

"That's the same reaction you had when I first came to this ship..."

Rope recalled when he first came to S.S.Anne back then.

At that time, he felt that...an auction of this size actually selling these things...it really wasn't as good as a small auction held by League that they had been to before.

That small auction was held in a tent, as if it was an on-site auction after a large poaching organization had been smashed, and was jokingly referred to as a 'loot sharing session' within the League.

That time, there were all kinds of precious Pokémon eggs, all kinds of precious props, even Mega Stone...

That was not the most luxurious auction Rope had ever participated in organized by the League. Though even the most luxurious auction only surpassed that 'spoils fair' in terms of quantity.

S.S. Anne, this ship could only be described as a place to watch for the likes of Rope and the others.

"Well then...let's get going...I don't imagine what's in the back is going to hold my attention very much."

Whitley said rather mercilessly.

"Heroes think alike."

Rope thought the same thing. The most precious things were nothing more than things like the Z-Crystal, the Extreme Giant Wristband, the Mega Stone, and so on...

All of these things had already been collected once when Rope had given his public lecture, and there really wasn't much of a need for them... as for the other things, not even the Paragon's egg would be able to catch Rope's attention ...After all, the Doctor could just trade research points from the intranet site...

And so the two left...

—————————

Watching the television footage of Whitley and Rope leaving the box, and then leaving the auction house. Then leaving the auction house, Ming's lips tightly pursed up...

A depressed color was brought between her eyebrows.

Behind her, the black-suited woman who had already finished her business and returned gave her a somewhat worried look. Seeing that she didn't do anything else, she let out a sigh of relief.

But she couldn't say much more...

Because advising one's boss to look on the bright side might be something an employee could do, but it definitely wasn't something a domestic servant like her should do.

"Where are they going when they're next in line?"

Ming asked.

"Judging from their route, probably the casino..."

"Arrange for someone to go to the casino..."

"Yes."