Chapter 66: Auction

Headmaster Elon’s manor was quite large. It could easily accommodate hundreds of guests comfortably and was the largest manors on the academy’s grounds. The manor had been built a long time ago and had housed many of the headmasters before him, and was surprisingly well maintained.

Compared to the many new academies being built by the current emperor, Mirth academy was a reputed, prestigious establishment built by the emperor's predecessor over a hundred years ago.

Within the main hall of the manor, Elon stood in front of the Rizon main family envoy.

“Elon, what are your plans for these shoes?” One of the envoys asked.

The envoy was much younger than Elon but was much higher in the hierarchy as he was the son of the current family head.

“Young master, the Emerald Pavilion sent this pair to the academy per the mysterious inscriptionist’s wishes for the younger generation to try them out. I initially planned to follow this person’s wishes,” Elon explained

A hint of greed appeared on the youth’s face, as he looked at the four pairs of shoes. They looked like shoes found in the trash but because of the saint tier inscription, they were shoes that almost everyone wished to try on.

“What were the conditions?”

“The conditions were that class 2 fighters or lower were allowed to try them out for two months, but would have to publicly display its strength. There were no further instructions other than that.”

“So after two months, we can keep them!” The young envoy laughed and replied. The older envoy suddenly spoke. “Pick out four candidates as soon as possible!”

Elon nodded and left.

When Elon received these shoes he was ecstatic!

He did not have any hope to influence such a great figure even with the help of the whole branch family so they sent out a raven to the main family for help.

As the headmaster of the academy, he had the right to decide what to do with these shoes. If he offered them to the main family, there was a chance that he could be promoted to the Imperial city!

‘Ella, the gods look upon us!’

The academy had many students who were class 2 fighters or lower. In fact, there was too many to pick from, but this did not impede Elon at all. He had already chosen who the ones who would have the honor to wear and test these saint tier inscriptions.

…..

The search for the mysterious eccentric was proving to be futile, but many did not give up.

Upon the day of the auction, the auction house a few distance away from their main building was packed full of people. There were many influential people, but a majority were not here to buy but to observe.

Many seats had been reserved and the price of a regular seat was 2 gold coins. There were also private rooms for more important guests but the price per seat was 10 gold coins.

The stronger factions quickly reserved these private rooms while the slower ones had to settle with sitting in the regular seat.

Space was limited and only about 500 regular seats were available.

When the auction house opened, the doors were already crowded with several people. It took over an hour to get everyone inside and seated. Not many commoners dared to attend and watch the auction as their status was far too low. They were also afraid of a fight breaking out between hidden experts or being caught up in an orchestrated attack to steal these saint tier boots by several factions, so only the strong and powerful chose to go.

Many people gathered in groups to chatter among themselves while some lone individuals sat quietly as they waited. Several men proudly displayed large emblems of their respective factions on their fashionable attire, while others were in complete disguise, their emblems as hidden as the forces they belonged to.

With such a gathering of powerful and influential factions as well as hidden experts of the empire, if one were to cause trouble, they would feel the wrath of the many who sat next to them.

The risk of offending such characters was grave if one was offended someone enough, the three generations of their families could be killed. Aside from that, there were also several royal guards placed between the stage and the audience. Their aura was concealed and only a few could detect their strength. It was an unimaginable deterrence for the strong, but peak experts knew that the real threat were the royal guards who stood behind them.

A man dressed in expensive clothes stepped out onto the stage and drew the attentions of the audience. It was Cody, the branch chief in charge of the purchase.

Normally, an alluring maiden would usually host the auction but with the status of these men before them, only the branch chief could fill this role appropriately. Although the Emerald Pavilion had the means for the President to attend, the President of the Emerald Pavilion would seldom appear in such functions, and thus, Cody was left in charge of this auction.

“Greetings, most honorable guests. I am the branch chief of this Emerald Pavilion, Cody Darkwood. Everyone probably knows the reason for this emergency auction, but I will explain the full details of today’s auction.”

The branch chief Cody explained all the conditions that applied in purchasing a pair. The news of the two additional pairs surprised some of the audience but most had already been informed by their intelligence network that had been spread out to catch the enigmatic master.

“So, in addition to the previous six pairs announced before, two new pairs are to be included in this auction. While, the quality of these boots are somewhat better than the previous six pairs, the materials are still quite ordinary.”

These ordinary materials were considered to be high quality to most commoners, but to this group of powerful people, only materials obtained from rare or powerful beasts or precious metals could be considered high quality.

“The bidding will start at 60 gold and will increase by at least 5 gold per bid. Once you have won the bid, you must produce a person of the specified cultivation”

Then suddenly from behind Cody, a fully armored man stepped forward. This was one of the leaders of the royal guards who came with the envoys.

“An esteemed commander from the Imperial family will assess whether or not the person you produce have the required cultivation.”

Then after gesturing to the fearsome commander who stepped forward, he continued.

“Since there is no guarantee of this product durability, we will refund 75% of the offer amount if it breaks during the testing phase.”

Everyone knew about this experiment and still chose to come participate. This was a way to get on the good side of this eccentric, others who simply want to obtain a pair but there were others who had other goals. Their goal was to kidnap or blackmail this eccentric, and so their full attention was on inspecting and observing the crowds. There was a chance that this famed eccentric was already in the audience so many of them looked carefully at each other.

“We’ll start with the bidding of the first item..”

More than half of the audience began to participate in the auction while the rest stayed silent and watched. The bids quickly grew to astronomical prices. The first pair was sold for 105 gold. The next pair sold for 125 gold. As each pair was sold, the price of the next pair grew higher. By the time the sixth pair was sold, it reached 165 gold.

Once the seventh pair was revealed, the price skyrocketed to 240 gold and the last pair was sold for 300 gold and was bought by the Imperial family. Although the 300 gold coins was excessive, they intentionally inflated the price to show the difference in financial strength.

By the time all the pairs were sold, the total price for all eight pairs was a little under 1500 gold coins. Even if the Emerald Pavilion refunded all 8 shoes with 75%, they still would’ve made about 3 times the price they bought them for, not to mention the profits they gained from the entrance fee for the auction.

Each buyer, as well as their respective factions, were required to identify themselves and swear an oath to the emperor's name before confirming their purchase.

The public demonstration was to be held in two days. Of course, the Emerald Pavilion and the Imperial Family would still be in possession of the shoes. Only once had the testing period finished would the buyers receive their purchases.

At that time, a guard will be assigned to watch over the shoes until the two month period was over. For factions with lower cultivation, one guard was enough, but for the other ones, two or three elites were used to keep them in check. This was a joint effort between the Emerald Pavilion’s hired elites and the royal guards.

…

The following day, the academy and the Emerald Pavilion invited many guests to spectate the testing phase as per the conditions of the mysterious eccentric. Everyone knew that it was during these tests would the eccentric would surely verify the results with his own eyes.

This was the main reason why everyone was playing along, especially the Imperial family! This was the sure way of identifying this eccentric!

The tests were held at the academy’s Colosseum. Although there were a few that chose not to come, there were many commoners and students that flocked to the Colosseum. Several teams of experts had spread themselves around the Colosseum to carefully observe the crowd.

Only around 5000 out of the 10,000 seats were filled.

From what the group of experts had deduced, the cultivation of who they were trying to find was low. Because if it was high, why would he need to ask fighters of class 3 or higher to test them out for him?

The other clue they had was that he or his apprentice was very short, but they believed that this master was at least as old as Deacon, perhaps even older. A master with such skill must have taken decades to develop, even a genius would take a couple of years to just master all the different inscriptions.

The next clue was the two months time that the person required for his research. This led many to believe that the person lived within the academy, possibly a teacher or a student or even a wanderer who happened to stay at the academy for a few months.

Many of them investigated the inns record to find anyone who had stayed for a month or two before the sale of these shoes, but with only less than a week, their investigations were all a dead end.

The next clue was this person should be very poor. The first set of shoes was made with very poor quality materials even by a commoner’s standard. The second batch was made soon after the Pavilion bought his wares and had noticeably increased in quality. This implied that the person they were trying to find initially had no means of creating equipment by himself nor buy higher quality equipment!

And the last clue that they had absolutely had confidence in was, that this person was an elementalist. Specifically, one who had a wind attribute and dark attribute, but they could not discount the fact that it could be more than one person. Even a specialist could learn inscriptions; If two or more worked together, there was a very small possibility that they could create this special inscription. This clue was the crux of their investigation.

The concealment attribute within arrays was specialized by dark elemental attribute, while the increase in the user’s speed would rely on wind elemental attribute.

The image of this master slowly formed; An old hermit cut off from society to further his research. Once he arrived the academy he could only afford to buy some cheap shoes to continue his research.

But very few also thought of the other possibility. A genius student, or perhaps a crafty teacher!

Plenty of them had already looked into the academy’s records for the teachers and students who had, at least, has one of the two attributes. Even specialists were also listed down. Teo, of course, was listed in this list.

They did not have to monitor everyone within the colosseum, they only had to monitor the few suspects that was on this list as well as other visitors that were discovered to be elementalists!

{Thank you, Merci Ludovic C. for your support of this series!}

[edited by thisisnate]

[Author's note: Thanks for everyone who helped me yesterday (April 7th) and as always, I hoped you enjoyed!]