As the beautiful girl began to introduce the auction, Rafael and the others paid close attention to the details so they could control their funds. The first part of the auction would have some special level 5 artifacts. No matter how innovative the artifact was, it would never have the power to cast an advanced spell. But some effects could be quite advantageous, such as a percentage increase in casting times, power, and range. Most people would only buy these innovative artifacts if they had some new effect that was worth studying. But in this auction, there would always be something innovative, or artifacts that could be useful in everyday life.
After the first part, there would be the second, with the sale of metals and ingredients on a large scale. The metals, in particular, would all be sold in tons. Rafael was very interested in buying a lot of iron ingots for his new project in progress. The advantage here was that gold could be used to purchase simpler metals and materials on a large scale.
The third part of the auction would be for rare materials, It was in this part that some of Iahssa's items would be sold, including rare herbs, new metal and magical alloys, and new reagents, as well as several treasures needed to create totems.
Then in the fourth part, we would have new spell books, new rituals, and the sale of some rare and exotic animals in their pure state (without alterations).
In the fifth part, we would have the natural treasures and some altered animals.
After that would be the two most important stages of the auction, the slave auction, followed by the final auction, where we would have the relics.
After the description of the stages of the auction, several innovative artifacts began to emerge, as the artifacts with new effects were good items for research, the Horadrim Master, who was the leader of his Order, bought most of them. Ignoring only those who had already obtained at least one copy of each type.
These artifacts were sold for lesser soul stones, and two of them caught my attention: a carriage that was said to be able to cross the Shadowlands, since it could hide the passenger's life signature. However, due to its many limitations, I did not bid on it, since it would carry too large a group to fit in it. Therefore, I focused my bid on a ring that increased the range and duration of earth-type spells. As soon as I won the bid, a servant came to my room to bring the item and collect the lesser soul stones.
I took a look at the artifact using the system:
Ring of the Golem Master
Duration of earth spells +20%
Range of earth spells +15%
*Earth-elemental golems have improved intelligence
I was surprised by the name in the system. It seems that whoever sold the ring did not know all of its effects or its real name. This was a stroke of luck. I put the ring on right away. The downside was that it didn't have a single spell[1], but its 3 effects more than made up for it. I would have to learn the earth golem summoning spell to test its hidden effect.
But for me, the percentages were almost as good as the relics, except for the lack of a superior spell and the chance to use spells without materials, which were also quite practical. Soon, the second part began, and I did some shopping as well, buying a lot of large-scale materials such as herbs used for healing potions and other daily experiments of the order members, and iron ingots in the scale of a few tons for the underground project.
This time, it only cost me gold. Speaking of gold, it was time to talk about my finances. With the soul stone collection mission carried out by the apprentices in Essos, the Order had a little over 100,000 stones this time. But this wasn't just my money, I needed to spend it carefully to fulfill our mission in this auction, which was to buy at least 1 or 2 relics for the founding members.
On my side, I only had 20,000 stones thanks to the treasure map, otherwise, I wouldn't even have 7,000, and I also managed to get my hands on another 6,000 stones from the 3 immortality fruits sold at the Sage Store auction. However, the remaining 7 fruits were also part of the Order's stock and would be used as extra funds on top of the 100,000 we had. This was also my agreement with the members; I would always have 30% of the resources that I doubled on my own. After all, without me, no one would have anything. Unfortunately, the horned rabbit meat and spiritual roots were checked by the shadowmen and put down as common natural resources.
There were several such items for sale today, and they would only sell for inferior stones, which was a disappointment for those of us who were hoping to collect more resources. But I made an unexpected profit early in the evening. Although Valmir had all of his items destroyed during the explosion, I managed to get my hands on Master Sun's bag, which was my goal all along. Not only did he have a lot of knowledge from the Adventurers' Alliance in his bag, but he also had a stash of 20,000 spiritual stones and 9 other fruits of immortality. With that, I had 46,000 stones and was more confident of obtaining one of the precious relics…
Author's Note:[2]
****
Special thanks to the Patreons:
Sage's Supporter: Jan, Vinnie, frimorigo, Leery Falcon, Parsa, Scott Robertson, and Pato Senalima!
Magical Apprentice: Axel Bour, Gabriele Sulpizio, Takatchi, mandeep singh, Austin, Kobe Robertson, Paul Gaslac, and Niteo akuma!
Senior Magic Apprentice: Cole Bromley!
[1] This is good because we don't have the burden on the user's soul due to the amount of Artifacts they are using...
[2] I'm sorry for the shorter chapter, I'm editing it over the weekend and I was going to work on the lines a bit more, but I had some health problems... It's been two years since I had a serious illness that made me feel as bad as I have in the last 3 days...
By the time this chapter is released, you'll probably already be reading The Stygai's Necromancer, so consider the extra words that were missing here, going to a new side story.
Have a great day everyone!