Auction (part 2)

"LET THE AUCTION BEGIN",

And just like that the auction that would make Ray forget about monetary issues for a while began.

The beautiful presenter who had involuntarily roped the hearts of many young gentlemen began to walk towards the center of the stage. At the center, there was a white crystal, the size of a football that glowed every few seconds. It added a mystery to the stage and many newcomers to the auction could not help but wonder about its origins and uses. However, the ones who came to the auction house on regular basis knew that this crystal was a communication crystal that allowed a person to transmit their thoughts to the other end of the crystal while the special function of this crystal was that it allowed short ranged dimensional transport between items from one end of the crystal to the other end. 

Then, after reaching the crystal, the presenter waved her hands, causing the crystal to light up and open a dimensional corridor that allowed items to pass through, causing an item to be transported. The item was covered in a veil, not letting people see what was the item precisely. However, with the dimensions of the item being about the size of one hand, many people thought of it as a weapon. 

The woman then said while uncovering the veil, "As always, we will start the auction for today with a rare grade treasure". 

As the woman pulled out the veil, many gasps were heard as the item that was over there was a one-handed staff with a deep blue crystal at the top while the surface of the staff was engraved with runic patterns that connected to the crystal on it.

The woman then said, " This is 'Water fall', this staff was the main weapon of a great sage when he was young, It's a water elemental staff that boosts magical power by 10 percent and grants a 5 percent buff to water elemental spells", the woman then continued, "the auction for this staff will begin at 100 gold coins with bids being at least 5 gold coins more, let the bidding begin".

Then, shouts erupted almost immediately and the whole auction house seemed to come alive as people began shouting their bids, they did so to such an extent that the bidding reached 150 gold coins almost immediately. However, as the bidding price increased, the speed at which the bids also decreased.

Then suddenly, a man spoke,    "200 gold coins for the staff", gasps sounded as someone had increased the bid by 50 gold coins and when they glanced, they saw that the bidder was someone sitting in the common area, wearing magical robes with a dragon engraved on them. However, after that, no one said anything as they knew who the bidder was and even if they could bid more than 200 gold coins, they did not dare as not to oppose the heavenly sword sect.

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As the auction continued, people bet on items whether they were rare or common items, skills, or weapons. After all, to people at this stage, such items even if they were common items were very important. All the while the auction was going on Ray had an amused smile on his face. This auction had turned very beneficial for him as at the start of the auction, he got an interesting message from his system.

"Ding!! Host has viewed a rare grade item, unlocking skill,   [Inspect]". After seeing the message, Ray clicked on the skill for more information, [Inspect]:- "Allows host to inspect the attributes, skills, and information about different weapons, artifacts, and other items". Ray was overjoyed when he saw the skill information as this skill allowed him to know about items one can not until they were appraisers of that item. However, there was the matter of checking the limits of the skill and to see the extent it could work.

As the auction continued, items, artifacts, skill scrolls, and weapons were displayed and the auction reached its near end. Ray had been informed by the manager that his pseudo-intermediate tier spirit cores would be auctioned towards the end of the auction. Therefore, he patiently waited for the end.

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 As the second last item was to be displayed, The presenter said, " today, we have two special types of items for display. The first is an intermediate tier spirit core with a fire elemental affinity from a fire steed at the beginning of the intermediate stage, the bidding starts from 500 gold coins. Moreover, the second type of item or items will be revealed at the end as special items of our auction".

This way, everyone participating in the auction became more excited about the special item and waited anxiously while some people started bidding for the fire elemental intermediate tier spirit core.

In the end, the spirit core was sold for 950 gold coins. Then, the presenter came and said, "For the last items of our auction, they are very items that require extreme expertise to acquire. Moreover, we have 4 of these items, they are "Pseudo-intermediate tier spirit cores" of 4 different beasts at the pseudo-intermediate tier.

They contain the properties as follows, the first spirit core has a property of extreme resilience belonging to a pseudo-intermediate tier night spider, the second spirit core is a poison elemental spirit core belonging to a pseudo-intermediate tier venomous snake while the third spirit core is of earth element affinity belonging to a pseudo-intermediate tier earth loin and lastly, a spirit core with wind elemental affinity belonging to a pseudo-intermediate tier silver furred wolf'

The crowd gasped in shock as they saw the spirit cores that were half a tier lower than the intermediate tier spirit cores but at the same time, rarer and more useful than them.

Moreover, in a mid-tier trade city like theirs, not many people sold spirit cores and mostly weapons and life-saving artifacts were sold. Therefore, even a normal intermediate tier spirit core was of great importance while pseudo-intermediate tier spirit cores were unheard of.

Thus, seeing four of such cores being auctioned came as a shock to many. Then the presenter spoke, " The auction for these items starts at 800 gold coins for the venomous snake's spirit core, 850 gold coins for night spider's spirit core while 1100 gold coins for earth loins spirit core and 1300 gold coins for silver furred wolf's spirit core".

As the crowd heard the prices, the crowd got frenzy and everyone began shouting bids while even the VIP members that sat in their VIP rooms started to bid.

Due to this, the prices for the first two-spirit cores reached astronomically high as they almost doubled. The first two spirit cores were bought by a person in VIP room number two for a total of 3300 gold coins. Then, the bidding for the last two spirit cores started as not only did they have much better affinities, they were said to be of the best quality as the rock loin had the best earth elemental affinity while silver furred wolf had the best wind elemental affinity.

Hence, many people started bidding on it as well, causing the auction house to erupt in chaos due to people shouting and cursing to get a chance to be in the game for bidding. 

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While people were shouting and cursing in a bid to obtain the pseudo-intermediate tier spirit cores, the two men from the phoenix fire sect looked at each other and nodded as they started participating in the auction for the first time as the item they came for was an earth elemental pseudo-intermediate tier spirit core that would help one of their artifacts, that was previously damaged in a battle to be restored completely, causing their disciples to use that artifact in the upcoming sect championship and upright the sect's reputation, hence, causing them to go all out and bid to their last reserves for sake of their sect.

However, how could things be such easy for them, as they had to not only face all the other people bidding for the spirit cores but the people from the Heavenly dragon sword sect also made things harder for them? Thus, a battle for bids started while Ray looked at all this chaos with widened eyes. After all, he never expected that the spirit cores he obtained in a bid to get stronger would cause people to go into a frenzy. Seeing all this, Ray thought,

 "Human greed is comparable to dragon greed, they don't let go of. something that fancies them no matter what".

.....

A/N:- Mass release chapter 9/10.