Nightmare Realm Summoner

The auction went on.

It quickly became apparent that this wasn’t meant to be something that would be done anytime soon. An hour after the auction sales had begun, they still hadn’t left the roughly 100 Credit starting-bid level. It didn’t seem like they would be anytime soon, either.

Alex and the others hadn’t bid on anything after Claire’s gambit with the sword. They’d been reporting back on everything to Finley and Rhyss, but neither of them had identified anything so important that it was worth dipping into their admittedly very sizable funds for.

They were all too aware that it would only be a matter of time before even something as much as 20,000 Credits could end up as insufficient. The real fight would happen at the end of the auction. Right now, all that mattered was getting there in the strongest position possible.

“Man,” Mite muttered as Sofia listened to people placing bids on a magical shield. “I wish we had infinite money.”

“That would defeat the point of money,” Aaron said.

“Not to mention it would take all the fun out of things,” Wess added. “What would you do if you had infinite money? Probably turn into the River King and somehow end up pissed that you don’t have infinite of something else. You can’t buy everything, you know.”

“Yeah?” Mite asked. “What can’t you buy?”

“A life,” Alex said. “No amount of money can make you not be a loser.”

“I could be a rich loser,” Mite said. “That’s not a bad settlement.”

“Why are you having to settle?” Wess asked with a snort. “Nobody said you were a loser yet.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good point,” Mite said. He paused a moment. Then his eyes narrowed. “Yet?”

Wess grinned. “What?”

Claire let out a tiny huff. “Stop bickering. Pay attention to the auction.”

“Why? We don’t need this thing,” Mite said. “It’s already… what? 200 Credits?”

“240!” someone called out from another room.

“240,” Mite corrected. “Not anywhere near as exciting as the sword. Not worth all that much either. People aren’t bidding on it. Boring.”

“It’s not about the prices,” Claire said. “It’s about who is bidding. It’s about the way they bid.”

Mite’s brow furrowed. “You can tell the difference? Aren’t they just calling shit out? Nobody is yelling at each other like they were with you. It’s normal.”

“There’s no normal about anything,” Claire said with a small smile. “And there’s a very clear difference. It’s not just the way people speak that matters. Think about how often they’re bidding on something. Look for the people that fold and the ones that don’t. That’s what matters.”

“What does that tell you?” Mite asked. “Can you really determine anything just by knowing if someone happens to bid rarely on something?”

“No,” Claire said. “Of course not. That would be ridiculous. I’m not a mind-reader. But I can use that information to begin predicting what people might do. Information never hurts. The more you have, the more likely you’ll make the right guess. It’s certainly better than guessing in the dark.”

“So did you figure anything out yet?” Wess asked.

Claire gave him a small shrug. “Specific? No. Not yet. It’s too early. But I have noticed that most of the rooms have already bid on something. There are only a few that haven’t. We would be included in their number if not for the sword.”

“And what does that say?” Alex asked. “That the people waiting are lower on funds and trying to save up? Or that they’re wealthy enough that they don’t care about this cheaper stuff?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Claire grinned. “Dunno. One of the two. But the fact we know that helps. It does mean that the people in those rooms likely aren’t near the middle of the pack. They’re either at the top or the bottom. One of the two. Probably.”

“Probably,” Aaron repeated. “Not the best odds. But better than a 50/50 guess. I see what you’re getting at.”

“Great,” Claire said. “So watch. I’m not going to pick up on literally everything. The more people are paying attention, the better. That’s how we catch someone out. And that’s exactly what the other groups will be doing to try and catch us out.”

“Damn,” Mite muttered. “I didn’t know there was this much that went into auctions. Always thought it was a metaphorical money dick-measuring contest.”

“That hasn’t changed,” Claire replied, looking back to the auction window. “Doesn’t mean you can’t find an advantage to help try and sway the odds in your favor. If we can somehow make strong players spend a bunch of their Credits on something we don’t want, then it puts us in a much better position to get the things we do. The same goes for how they view us. Auctions are — as you so politely put it — a dick-measuring contest. It’s just that money is only one of the metrics. The other one is politics.”

“I’m seeing it,” Aaron said. “You wouldn’t start a bidding war against someone if you knew they were obscenely rich. They might just buy everything you want to screw you over out of spite.”

Wess raised a finger into the air. “Question. How do we know the guys we screwed with aren’t the big rich guy?”

“Starfallen wouldn’t have been baited so easily,” Claire replied immediately. “And I knew they weren’t at the top of the pack for another reason.”

“They spoke first,” Alex said. “That’s it, right? It’s like dogs. The small ones are the yappiest. There’s no reason to start shit-talking if you’re so rich that it doesn’t matter that someone is bidding against you.”

Claire nodded. “That was my reasoning as well. I raised the price by a wide margin, but someone like a Starfallen member wouldn’t have cared. That would just be spare change to them. The fact it antagonized Room 3 meant they were weaker than they wanted to appear. Only after that did I antagonize them.”

“Goddamn,” Wess said, his hand dropping as his smile slipped away. “You… that’s a really damn good point, actually. You’re good at this.”

“Thank you,” Claire said. “I know. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make mistakes. So I need you all to be listening when this next item goes up. I can’t do it all myself.”

“I’m on it,” Aaron said with a nod. “This is way more involved than I thought. What rooms haven’t spoken yet?”

“5,” Claire replied. “And 9. Everyone else has bid on at least something.”

Alex glanced to the wall of their room. They were Room 3. That meant the two people that hadn’t placed a bid on anything yet were right at their side and… if he counted correctly, directly across the auction house from them.

“So what do we do now?” Mite asked. “Just keep listening?”

Claire nodded. “For now. And to everyone. Not just those two. There are inevitably people that know how this whole game works here. The Great Families aren’t new to this. Someone will come to poke around for information soon enough. That’s how the next phase of this goes.”

“What happens then?” Wess asked. “You didn’t cover this bit in our rundown.”

Claire sent him a quick look. “Honestly? I thought you’d know already. That’s an oversight on my part. Sorry.”

“Ow,” Wess said. “That might be the most insulting thing you could have said. What am I supposed to say? Sorry for being an auction-virgin? I only ever robbed the places. I didn’t participate.”

“You robbed an auction house?” Mite asked in awe.

“Wrong story, wrong time,” Wess said. He coughed into his fist. “Let’s focus on the current moment, yeah? What do we do next, Claire?”

Alex was wondering the same himself. He barely even wanted to say anything. Watching Claire in her natural environment was, in a way, mesmerizing. But he didn’t even want to start to think about what the Dhampir Court games must have been like.

If literally everyone was as skilled as Claire and thought like this… it must have been an absolute shitshow of betrayal and scheming.

It probably would have made a pretty good K-drama.

“Aside from listening?” Claire asked. “Given what we’ve been told of how this auction is laid out… we wait. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long. Should be at any point, now. It’s definitely gone on long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” Aaron asked.

There was a knock on the wall.

All of them turned back as an outline of a doorway formed in the stone. A moment later, it swung open to admit Edward. The butler closed the door behind him smoothly, then inclined his head slightly.

“My apologies for intruding. I hope you are all enjoying the auction thus far,” Edward said. “There has been a request from Room 2 to converse. Are you willing to allow one of their representatives to come and speak with you?”

Claire didn’t even say anything. She didn’t have to. Alex could practically feel the smug aura radiating off her.

“Yes,” he said. “Please do. Send them in.”

“As you wish. And as a casual reminder, any conflict is strictly prohibited,” Edward said. “The aggressor will be dealt with and punishment levied upon their entire room. Please keep that in mind.”

“Will do,” Alex promised.

Wess gave him a thumbs up.

“I will go retrieve them now,” Edward said. “Please prepare yourselves.”

Then he swept back through the door, closing it behind himself. There was a moment of silence.

“Right,” Aaron said. “That’s what we were waiting for. Probably should have connected the dots on that.”

“Probably,” Alex agreed with a grin. He stretched his fingers out. “But it hardly matters. Get ready, everyone. It’s game time.”