Imri stepped through the portal, returning to New Chicago. Nearby, a large crowd of refugees had gathered, hoping for a better life in Celestia. They were dirty and had little more than the clothes on their backs. Many looked gaunt with dry, cracked lips, and a few even had distended bellies from the later stages of starvation.
Imri felt a bit of disgust at the situation and no small amount of guilt when he thought about the decadent meals he had been eating. Only the fact that he had been working tirelessly prevented him from self-loathing. He vowed to do everything he could to improve the situation. He mentally moved up the priority of the industrial-sized portals he intended to build. Hopefully, improved logistics would help with humanitarian relief, and, in the long term, better trade would bring some prosperity.
Fortunately, the military controlled the crowd, preventing them from rioting and pushing to the portal in a mob. They were stern, bordering on rough with some, but it was necessary. Those arriving for the auction quickly cleared the area.
A dense fog hung over the city, obscuring anything further than a few meters in front of Imri. What little he could see painted a bleak picture; despite the month since the battle, the city still looked desolate, like images on the news from a war-torn country. Most of the damage from the battle remained, with no signs of repair.
General McCarthy and the other barons who lived in New Chicago met them near the nexus. They quickly ran through a report of what had happened in the month they had been gone. It painted an even more bleak picture than what Imri had seen; nearly all the reserves that had existed before the integration had been exhausted. Grocery stores were almost wholly devoid of foodstuffs, and hospitals and pharmacies lacked medicine, bandages, and practically every other disposable item. The military wasn’t much better off, having depleted their ammunition reserves. Work was underway to give New Chicago a more robust supply chain, but results would take a while to show. They would also need to gather more raw materials to be self-sufficient.
A lot was riding on this auction. It wasn’t just a chance to acquire unique and powerful items; it was a chance to buy necessities that weren’t available in the city. However, Imri suspected New Chicago wouldn’t be the only settlement looking to be buyers.
With only a few minutes before the auction began, Imri excused himself. He quickly located a food shelf with a line of hungry people extending around the block. Inside were several security guards and volunteers handing out meager rations to the expectant recipients. He made his way to the back, with no one stopping or challenging him. He found the manager and explained that he had come to donate. He focused on his Inner Domain, pulling out several crates of food stuffs. It wouldn’t make a dent in the shortage, but it was better than nothing.
He returned to the nexus just in time, with the system timer mere seconds from the appointed hour. As the auction opened, hundreds of people reached out and touched the nexus. Fortunately, they only needed to initiate the auction that way and were free to pursue the offerings from afar afterward.
The first phase would last twenty-four hours, and Imri could mentally check the remaining time with a mental prompt. He decided to focus on listing his items first before browsing to see if there was anything he wanted. He chose only to list a portion of his inventory immediately, hopefully creating the misconception that the supply was limited. He noticed that the minimum starting bid was equivalent to the price at which the system store would buy the item. That usually wouldn’t be an issue, as there wasn’t much reason to sell something below market rate. However, that might be an issue for some of Imri’s more expensive items.
It was especially problematic for his portals, with a base price of six million credits. He had created them with the hopes of greatly expanding the network at a low cost and would have given them away for free if he could. He had placed several restrictions on them, requiring the portal to be opened from an existing location until a registered admin unlocked it. That was out of an abundance of caution, as he doubted whoever purchased the portal would have the mana to operate it. Even opening the portal from Celestia would be a challenge, and he doubted they would have the mana to spare until after the Azala were dealt with. Even then, it would depend on the distance between them, as it would undoubtedly be further than New Chicago. Fortunately, he had configured the terminal to allow micro-portals to be used for communication so they would at least be able to converse in the interim.
While he was setting up his items, the system allowed him to provide a brief description of what the item did. Unfortunately, the system limited this text to five hundred characters, forcing him to be concise. The remaining items were more straightforward to describe, though he still couldn’t dive into the nitty gritty of each rune. He also set buyout prices for each, with the minimum value twice the starting price. He put it at around three times the base price for most items, except the portals, which were set to the minimum. The increment each bid increased by was set at a minimum of one percent of the base price, but Imri increased that to five percent, hoping it would encourage people to buy it outright rather than waiting.
The final setting was who would be able to purchase the listing. Imri had gone back and forth on this; no matter what, he would exclude the Azala and Chixel, but there was an argument to be made to sell to the other factions, as it would drive the price higher while not being used against them in the coming conflicts. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what species were at war with the various other human factions and would eventually become their enemies. Not wanting to give an enemy of humanity a weapon, he limited all his enchanted items to only be available for humans.
However, there was one item he was willing to sell to anyone: Corrolth’s scales. There were several reasons for this. The primary one was that it wasn’t immediately usable for any of the current factions. Corrolth had assured him it would require a tier four or a very talented high-rank tier three dedicated crafter to work the scale into an item. Both were incredibly unlikely, as the planet could not support tier four beings; Corrolth herself was an example of this. Tier three crafters would be few and far between, making the chances of a prodigy extremely low. This meant the planet''s fate would have already been decided by the time the scale was a useful item. He would get the best return by including all the factions, especially since humans wouldn’t know the true worth of a tier-four dragon scale.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
An hour later, Imri had finished listing his items. By then, several of his enchantments had already been purchased outright, and many more already had bids. It was a good sign that humanity was doing well enough to purchase his relatively expensive inventory. That certainly wouldn’t have been the case in New Chicago.
Imri transitioned to a buying. He was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of junk available to purchase. Most items appeared to be pre-integration items that had been salvaged. Many were listed at exorbitant prices, though those items had yet to receive any bids. People could put items at whatever price they wanted, but it was only worth what someone was willing to pay for it.
Fortunately, the system allowed for filtering through natural language queries. With a thought, Imri removed all the salvaged items. Next, he sorted through crafted items, with the highest-quality items at the top. He grinned as his items dominated the display. He mentally commanded the system to exclude them. The rest of the list was diverse. Many listings had a fantasy aesthetic, with heavy armor, swords, bows, and similar items. This was interspersed with more modern items like guns, grenades, drones, and other vehicles. Like Coleman’s creations, many were magitech hybrids, adapting existing technology to run on mana-enhanced fuels or outright running on mana. Imri debated buying several of the ones that ran on mana but discarded the idea. He already had a company that would eventually produce both types.
The next items he considered were better weapons and armor. However, the quality among the top was similar to what he could order in Celestia, but the price in the auction was outrageous. Furthermore, most items for sale were from low-tier monsters, with the rare tier two armor and weapons selling for millions of credits. Somewhat disappointed, Imri kept looking through the listings but couldn’t find any crafted item worth purchasing.
As more of Imri’s enchantments were bought outright, he reconsidered his prices. He added more listings, keeping the base price at the minimum but increasing the buyout price. Since the auction started, his wealth had nearly doubled, and he had only gone through a fraction of his inventory.
With mixed feelings, Imri continued looking through the listings. He was about to give up on the crafted items when something caught his attention. It hadn’t been near the top due to not having the highest quality, but it was something Imri wanted regardless: an ability tome, and not just one but dozens of them. His excitement waned a bit when he noticed most of the abilities were fairly mundane, containing basic traits that the university was already training, like melee weapon proficiency or blacksmithing proficiency. Despite this, almost all the tomes had bids over a million credits. He debated bidding on several he found interesting, but they were all skills or traits he could learn independently with enough time. However, before he could make any bids, his eyes lingered on a particular tome that he had almost missed.
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Ability Tome: Ability Tome Writing
Description: An ability tome is an aid for increasing the rate at which a new ability is learned. The rate of increase is dependent on the quality of the ability tome. Each read of the tome reduces the essence contained within the tome, reducing the effectiveness of each subsequent reading.
Trait Contained: Ability Tome Writing (1F): Gives an understanding of how to create ability tomes. Reduces the ability comprehension required to create the tome by 5% and improves crafting efficiency of ability tomes by 1.5%.
Quality Level: 27
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Imri badly wanted that tome. Unfortunately, based on the bid history, he wasn’t the only one; the price was already over two million credits and still climbing. With a shrug, Imri mentally selected the ‘buy it now’ option for ten million credits. An instant later, it materialized in his hands. Unsure if he wanted to read it himself or give it to someone who could dedicate themselves to it, he stored it in his Inner Domain without reading it. Despite the expense, his credits still increased since the last time he checked. He was also pleased to see an extensive bidding war for each dragon scale, with the prices nearing the ten million mark. Both portals also had bids, which he was excited about, more for the network than the credits, but he would still take their money.
He resumed inspecting the crafted items, mentally filtering out the common types he had already decided against, such as weapons and armor. The remaining list was still massive, containing everything from appliances to art. Unfortunately, nothing piqued his interest the way the skill tomes had.
Moving on, he filtered to a different category of items: natural treasures. This list was far smaller than any of the subcategories of crafted items, with the entire list viewable within a few minutes. A significant portion of this list was from Celestia, with someone selling vials of the spring water and Sylvi selling the Golden Plums of Agility. Fortunately, there were several items that Imri was interested in. Imri was interested in several items similar to the plums, which increased a primary attribute''s base and max. With limited available supply, Imri again went with the ‘buy it now’ option, as the chance of saving a few credits wasn’t worth the risk of missing out on the items he wanted.
He purchased two containers with tea leaves that would increase intelligence by one. The next were two small jars of blueberries, increasing his willpower by one each. Finally, he purchased two charisma-increasing pomegranates for Emelia. For the six stat points, he paid nearly twenty million credits.
He also purchased a fist-sized chunk of crystal for just under a million credits. It barely qualified as a treasure, as its only function was storing mana. However, it could store almost twice as much mana per unit of volume as Espeonite. Espeonite would still be sufficient for most uses, but Imri wanted the crystal for his Staff of the Celestial Mage.
Imri smiled, pleased with his haul of credits and items so far, and this was just the beginning. He suspected the truly interesting items would be in the second phase, and he now had even more credits to buy what he needed.