Nightmare Realm Summoner

“How did it go?” Claire asked as Alex stepped back into their room. She didn’t look over her shoulder. Her eyes were focused on the auction unfolding beyond their window.

“About as well as it could have, I think,” Alex said. He waited until the outline of the door had vanished behind him. Even though he was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone waiting in the hall and spying on them, it didn’t hurt to be a little cautious. “I told them about the item that Thorn mentioned. I also suggested we might be able to loan them money under the right circumstances.”

“How much did you offer?” Mite asked.

“I didn’t offer a specific amount. It was more of a suggestion than anything,” Alex replied as he walked over to the table and sat down next to Claire. “I said it so they’d be more willing to try and bid for Thorn’s item. They were concerned we were just using them.”

“They’d be idiots if they didn’t realize that we were,” Claire said absently. She shrugged one shoulder. “But that’s just how things like this go. Everyone is using everyone. The sooner you can acknowledge that and turn it to your advantage, the better. It doesn’t matter if someone is using you if you get something you wanted out of the deal.”

“That’s… certainly one way to look at things,” Aaron said, scratching the back of his neck. “But at least it looks like we very well might be able to do exactly what Alex pitched.”

“Oh?” Alex asked. “Has the auction been going well? I haven’t really paid much attention to it, but I saw one of the cores was for sale.”

“If we assume that the money Bleak Night gave us after their appraisal was based off the starting price of the items they put up for sale, then yes,” Wess said. “We’re doing damn well. I think we’re on track to make something around double what they expected. Those cores are selling like crazy. Three have gone for around 300 Credits already, and they were set at 150 to start. I’m pretty sure we have a few more of them coming up too. That’s some great profit to kick things off with.”

“Damn,” Alex breathed, looking back out at Sofia on the platform far below. “That is good.”

“Almost as good as robbing the place,” Wess said with a chuckle. He rubbed his hands together. “But not quite.”

“Sold!” Sofia called. “Once more, for 350 Credits! And would anyone be surprised to know that we’ve got one more of these lovely Riftwarped Cores? I can’t go saying which room put these up… but I have to say that they must be quite connected. Don’t pass up your chance to get your hands on a material this rare! The bidding will once again start at 150 Credits!”

Alex and the others exchanged a glance.

Then, almost in unison, they all grinned.

As far as auctions went… it was pretty hard to complain about this one was going.

***

Sofia sold 10 Riftwarped Cores before she finally moved on to a different item.

Roughly 3,500 credits. And if the starting bid of the item really was what the auction house had appraised it at, then they’d made roughly 2 times more than the potential worst case scenario. That was a pretty significant change in final earnings.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to predict all that much from the results they currently had. The majority of their potential earnings laid in the key Wess had stolen and the Corruption Core Class Shard. If anyone got into a big bidding war over those… Alex didn’t even want to let himself think about how big their profits might have been. That was just counting his eggs before they hatched.

They’d yet to bid on anything else since the sword incident. There just hadn’t been any items that had gotten anyone’s attention. Mite continued to run all the items he saw by to Finley and Rhyss. While there were a few things that Finley did show some faint interest in, there had been yet to anything that really interested either of them.

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And so they waited.

No other rooms tried contacting them yet. The auction simply ground on.

It struck Alex that there was a rather significant number of items up for bid that could only be described as entirely boring. Mundane building materials. Weapons that were by no means bad — but they simply just weren’t very interesting.

Maybe he was just spoiled by his own weapons.

Either way, nothing was anywhere near worth spending money on. Even the most interesting of the magical items up for sale were no more than a potential novelty.

And Mirrorwane’s representatives weren’t the only ones that had picked up on that particular fact. Rooms 5 and 9 — the two that hadn’t bid on anything yet — still hadn’t placed any bids. Room 4 had only bid on a few things, mostly relatively uninteresting weapons. Room 6 had bought quite a few. Room 3, who Claire had antagonized at the start of the auction, had bought a number as well.

Everyone else seemed to be largely biding their time for the later sections of the auction. And those sections were approaching. How fast they were approaching was an entirely different question, though. The starting bid prices for everything had been steadily increasing. It had already passed 500 Credits and was well on its way toward 1000.

“How many things do you think they’ve actually got for sale?” Mite muttered. “This is ridiculous.”

“We haven’t seen anything that interesting, though,” Aaron said. “Is having a bunch of relatively low level stuff really that impressive? Not to say it’s not cool. I’d love to get all of it for free or at a big discount. But we haven’t seen a single thing actually worth bidding on yet.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mite said with a shake of his head. “I wasn’t talking about anything on our end.”

“Huh?” Aaron’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“He’s talking about the auction house,” Wess said. He sucked on his cheeks for a moment. “And he’s right. Bleak Night is taking a chunk of the proceeds for single item they sell. And they’re selling a hell of a lot of items. The real winners tonight are them. It doesn’t matter who gets what.”

Claire nodded in agreement. “And they haven’t even gotten close to running their reserves dry yet.”

“How do we know?” Aaron asked. “They could be building up to the end right now, couldn’t they?”

“Nobody calls an auction when this is all they’ve got,” Claire replied. “They wouldn’t get any repeat customers. You need enough fancy stuff that everyone that comes at least feels like they had a chance to bid on something worth their time. That way, even if they don’t win, they feel like they could have. And that makes them come back the next time around.”

“Not to mention you want the crowd excited when the big stuff comes,” Wess said. “And these blokes are clearly rolling in Credits. They’re definitely on the Wealth Leaderboard somewhere. They’d definitely have the resources to put some fancy stuff up when they want to. I’d say we’re halfway through at best.”

“Damn,” Aaron muttered. “Maybe we should set up an auction house exclusively for Mirrorlands items. We’d make a fortune.”

“Probably. But then we’d have to deal with all the people looking to rob the place,” Wess said with a wry smile. “And that comes with a whole host of its own problems. You can trust me on that.”

“I do,” Aaron said without a hint of amusement in his voice.

A knock rang agains the door. Alex blinked.

“Come in,” he called.

Maybe Room 4 decided they wanted a loan for something?

Edward stepped into the room and gave them his signature head nod-bow.

“I hope you are still enjoying the auction,” the butler said. “You have another request to meet. It comes from Room 5.”

Alex’s eyes widened slightly. That was one of the Rooms that hadn’t bid on anything yet… and as optimistic as he may have wanted to be, he didn’t get the feeling that three groups of Nativeworlders had made it to the auction. That meant it was almost certainly an Outworlder reaching out to them.

“Let them in,” Claire replied with a shrug. “Let’s see what they’ve got to say.”

“As you wish,” Edward said. “I will return momentarily. Thank you for your patience.”

Then he swept away once more.

“What do you think they want this time?” Aaron asked. “Help getting the same item that Thorn wants? That would be pretty funny.”

“Maybe,” Claire said. “Though we’ll have to be careful. Just because the Outworlder families don’t have to obey any off-planet treaties doesn’t mean they can’t be allied or working together. I wouldn’t mention anything about Thorn at all.”

“I think we’ll just let you do the talking,” Mite said.

Everyone else nodded in agreement.

They all turned to the outline in the wall, watching impatiently as seconds ticked by in Edward’s absence. Then there was one more knock. The door formed. It swung open.

Into the room stepped a tall, bald man with a melon-sized hole in his chest.

The door slammed shut behind him.

And then there was a long second of silence.

“Oh, fuck off,” Alex said. “Seriously?”

“You,” Absolution said. His eyes widened as he spotted Alex. He’d seen his bone mask and tuxedo before, and it was clear that he recognized it. “What are you doing here?”