Magus: Rise of the Darkness Empress

After the gift demonstration of the merchants was over, next it was time for the baronets to show off. But currently most of them were feeling quite a bit nervous as most of them were not capable of gifting anything too expensive for this occasion.

Soon the very first gift was presented and the announcer read out aloud the description of the gift that was given by the gift giver themselves.

”For the great and mighty Skepa family, the Dotobar baronet family has prepared a painting made by the late great artist Ronove himself. This masterpiece of his is called ”Twilight’s Dinner”. ”

As soon as this was said, a commotion spread in the room. Even though Ronove was not a super famous artist, among the people who were knowledgeable about art, he was quite well known.

And as this great artist had died when he was only 27 years old, there were a very limited number of paintings that he had created. So his paintings were considered to be quite rare and very valuable. Any of his masterpieces would definitely go for at least over one hundred gold coins in any auction.

So immediately, the whole party room became excited to see this masterpiece with their own eyes. This name of the painting was not heard by anyone before, so it most likely a newly discovered painting. For this reason, all of the nobles and especially the art enthusiasts were excited to see it.

Very soon, the painting in question was shown. Immediately the whole excited room became silent. And the reason for this silence was not because the painting was too amazing to make everyone speechless but because the painting was actually a fake.

Even though Weiss was not really an art enthusiast herself, she had read a lot of books regarding this subject and her perception was insanely strong. So with just a single look, she was able to see that this painting was a fake and was made at most a month ago, while the great artist Ronove had died about 70 years ago.

Even if the other nobles were not as knowledgeable as Weiss or had perception as strong as hers, they were still extremely well trained from their childhood and finding if something was fake or not was a basic skill that every semi decent noble should have.

So, most of the nobles present here were able to detect that this painting as a fake. But it looked like baronet Dotobar was incapable of doing this as he was currently feeling very proud thinking that the whole room was silent because they were awed by what he had managed to prepare.

Actually Baronet Dotobar had all the reason in the world to be proud. He had managed to get his hand on this valuable painting by doing business with a powerful criminal syndicate that had kidnapped his niece and had killed his brother.

Only someone as steady as him was capable of not losing his mind in revenge and deal with this powerful criminal syndicate as if they were good friends. He had even officially given his niece and also his just widowed sister in law to the leader of the criminal syndicate as his playthings.

He himself was planning to make his sister in law into his new concubine. So by giving her away, baronet Dotobar was showing his large heart. Or at least that was what he thought.

But his day dream came to an end when the announcer himself who was also a professional appraiser, declared that this painting was fake and was made only about a month ago.

The person who had created this was not bad but he was not very exceptional either. So the price of this art piece would not even be one whole gold coin.

Hearing this appraisal result, the whole body the baronet started to shake and he was having a very very hard time accepting this. He had spend a fortune on this, so obviously he did not want to believe that it was fake and he was fooled.

Seeing this, Weiss thought that, there was a possibility that instead of the baronet getting scammed, there was a possibility it was the seller who was scammed first. Without an expert and knowledgeable appraiser, it was very common for regular people to be fooled in this business.

After the incompetent gift from Baronet Dotobar, the next few gifts turned out to be unproblematic but also insignificant. Something like silk clothing costing a few silver coins and the bones of a monster beast was also gifted.

Even though these gifts were not a big deal, at least they were proper gifts with clear goodwill behind it from the gift giver instead of being vain fake items. So the reputation of the baronets was not harmed because of this.

Actually, the baronet who had gifted the marquis with the bones of the monster that the baronet himself had hunted, he was praised because of his strength and even got a few offers to join other higher ranking nobles for leisure hunting. So this turned out to actually be a very good deal for him.

...

So, just like that the gift demonstration of the baronets came to an end. Other than the first fake painting, two more fakes were discovered later on which made the giver of those gifts quite embarrassed.

But after the previous incident, they did not receive too much interest from the nobles here. So the rest of the demonstration was rather peaceful.

And now that the baronets were done, I was time for the barons to step up. There was not a single baronets who had a more valuable gift than the merchants, so this was actually quite humiliating for the noble society.

But among the barons, there were quite a few rich ones who should very easily be more wealthy than those merchants. So they should definitely have more than enough capital to prepare something valuable. So the only thing that needed to be seen was if they were generous enough to splurge a little here or not.

And other than those rich barons, there was the rising star of the noble society, the Souran family who was also just a baron rank family. And almost all the nobles had a lot of trust that the baroness Souran had definitely prepared something super valuable for this gift demonstration.

So they were not worried about the nobles continuing to lose face after this round was over. And at the same time, they were also very interesting in learning what the baroness was gifting the Skepa family. So with a lot of speculations running around, the gift demonstration for the barons started.