Stygian Mage

The reason that the Rogue Initiators, Soren included, had decided to spike the price of the items that any Family wanted to buy was that they simply wanted them to spend more than they had initially planned. So that those Families would not start bidding for other items; items that these Rogue Initiators wanted. These Initiators knew that they stood no chance against the Families if they were to fight them on fair terms. Of course, this method carried very high risks, but it was also very effective. Sure, by doing this they got themselves on the hit list of those Families, but in the end, they got what they wanted.

As this continued on, more and more Families started to just focus on the items that they wanted to buy and neglected the others. Of course, they could have also tried the same method as the Rogue Initiators and spiked the price of other items, but they didn’t do so. It was not because they were showing mercy. No, this was because they knew that the same method would not work against those Initiators.

The situation surrounding the Rogue Initiators was different from that of the Families. These Initiators had the freedom to give up on any item they previously wanted if its price was to be spiked to an unreasonable amount; after all, they had to make decisions only for themselves.

The Families were different. They not only had to fight against these Initiators but also against other Families. Just because the Rogue Initiators were going against the Families in the bidding war didn’t mean that the Families would unite together against them. Because one Family or Organization getting what they wanted and, in turn, getting stronger was something those other Families didn’t want to see. They were not on friendly terms, after all.

………

“Congratulations to the one who won this bid. Now, let’s move on to the next item on the list.” The host, Logan, said as he released a long breath. Even though he was a very strong Initiator, this whole thing was still taxing for him; not physically or mentally, but emotionally.  He was getting bored by repeating the same thing over and over again. Now, he was wishing he had bought those automatons. Sure, it would piss off those higher-ups a little if he used an automaton for hosting an auction, but at least, he could rest for a while. He was getting frustrated by the minutes now. He wanted to vent it all out on something, or someone.

Suddenly, he remembered that there was a royal family member of the Stuteron Kingdom currently staying in this town. What if he killed that person? That would cause chaos for sure.

Thoughts like these started forming in his mind.

It would be a good time pass and would also release his pent up frustration. At the same time, it would also piss off those at the top and would make for a good recreational activity.

Logan seemingly had forgotten that he was there hosting the auction because he had already pissed off those people at the higher hierarchy. All these boring activities were starting to bring out his inner troublemaker.

What if that Royal Family member was a girl? Then he would only fuck her and won’t kill her. Seducing a royal female member….he hadn’t done that in quite a while. Was it 40 years ago?

Once again, his thoughts took a turn and went into an entirely different direction.

“The starting price of this item is set at 2000 Mana Crystals and the minimum increment is set at 200 Mana Crystals.” Of course, the auction didn’t stop just because Logan was off in his dream world, thinking how he would fuck that girl; if it was a girl, that is.

The first bid came on a second after the bidding started—2400 Mana Crystals.

At this point, it had become much easier for Soren to control his emotions; he had already gotten used to all this by now. So, he calmly calculated in his mind and raised the bid.

Soren’s bid—2800 Mana Crystals.

He felt no excitement this time; neither did he feel any anxiety. He was getting used to situations like these and was starting to have full control over his feelings. But aside from this, he was also slightly surprised at his own capability of controlling emotions just after getting used to them once or twice.

This had happened before too; when he had killed those Goblins for the first time. At that time also, he had easily controlled his emotions after slashing someone’s throat for the first time. He never paid any attention to it before, as what had happened afterward indicated that he didn’t have the ability to control his emotions; he could just suppress them. His subconscious; his nightmare; his outburst; everything pointed towards the fact that he couldn’t control his emotions.

But Soren felt different. He believed that he truly was capable of getting used to, and controlling his emotions in a very short amount of time.

Both the facts conflicted with each other; which one was true? Soren didn’t know. He hoped his own conclusion was right, that he was able to control his emotions. But at the same time, what happened before in the jungle weighed heavily on his mind.

Soren didn’t know what had caused his outburst, and why he had felt so free after the fact. It was like a shackle in his mind that was binding him had broken into pieces.

…

The bidding war continued for a while but ultimately, Soren won the item with a bid of 6000 Mana Crystals. With this, he was down to 7300 Mana Crystals which was the maximum amount he could use for the next and final item that he wanted.

There were some items to be auctioned before that so, he decided to lay back and enjoy the comfort of the soft sofa. At this point, very few people were willing to spike the price of any item. Soren also chose not to interfere with any of the Family’s biddings anymore. He knew it was the right time to pull out of this. Continuing anymore would only gather every Family’s ire on him alone instead of spreading it amongst all the Rogue Initiators.

…

Time passed as more and more items were auctioned off. Very soon, it was time for the one that Soren wanted to buy. As the host, Logan, started his usual dialogue to start off the auction for this item, Soren also opened his eyes and got ready to bid for it.

The bid started with a starting price of 2500 Mana Crystals with the minimum increment amount set at 300 Mana Crystals.

By this time in the auction, there were not many people that were willing to take part in any bidding war unless they truly wanted to buy that item. Due to that, the price of the items increased in a very stable and controlled manner. Generally, the item with this range of starting price and increment amount would get sold for around 6500 Mana Crystals. The only way its price would go above that would be when a Family or an Organization got involved in the bidding war. Only they had the resources to truly take the price of any item to another high. But this time, their hands had been tied by the actions of other Rogue Initiators and Soren. This time, they could only go for the items that they were originally there for and left other ones alone. This was also the intended result that Soren and other Rogue Initiator wanted.

As such, Soren, with his capital of 7300 Mana Crystals, won this item easily with the final bid of 7100 Mana Crystals. The item was a skill named Shadow Steps. This was a Darkness-type skill which needed only Mana as a source. From its description, it seemed like a stealth-movement type of technique. But Soren had different ideas for the future evolution of this skill. One of the evolution paths for this skill in his mind was the Elemental Teleportation.

Elemental Teleportation was a high ranking spell which was used by Spellcasters exclusively. It was as its name indicated; a teleportation spell that was based on any particular Element. Although Soren was a little unsure if skills could evolve in that direction or not, Elemental Teleportation being a spell, he still bought this Darkness-type skill; it was one of the best movement type techniques that he had seen since coming to this world, after all.

After paying for the item using his card sometime later, Soren heaved a big sigh of relief. He had finally obtained everything he wanted from this auction. Now, the only thing left for him to achieve his freedom was to use the Frozen Crystal fruit to breakthrough to Rank 1 and then break the chains of this Blood Contract.

…

The auction continued as there were still a few items left to be sold. Although Soren had already bought what he needed, he still remained inside the hall. It was not because he wanted to take a look at the items or that he wanted to see who would win which item, it was because he knew that was the best move for those who had interfered with the Family’s bids. Of course, there were many people that went out after buying what they wanted, but doing that contained a risk; especially for people like Soren who went against the Families. It was because going out in the middle of the auction would make it very easy for those Families to find information on them. 

Mixing in the crowd at the end would at least give them a few days of a head start before the Families and the Organizations would find anything about them or buy their information directly from ‘Myriad Items’; of course, given that they didn’t register for ‘Myriad Items’ Card.

…

To pass his time, Soren started looking at the description of the items to be sold. He was getting slightly bored while waiting for the whole thing to finish. But he also didn’t want to close his eyes and rest as he knew that he would end up sleeping because of how relaxed he was feeling after finally getting what he had wanted for so long.

All the items left now were things that were out of Soren’s reach right now. That was the case especially for the last item to be sold. From the description, Soren found out that it was a Natural Spell Vessel. Seeing the item reminded Soren of what he had read about Natural Spell Vessels and Artificial Spell Vessels when he was gathering information from Liston Family’s Information Center.

According to that information, all the Spell Vessels contained a certain type of Spell Formation inside them. This was something that Soren could not understand before actually hearing the term ‘Spell Formation’ from Smiley and Tera. The Spell Formation inside a Spell Vessel was what made the Spell.

Soren also connected this fact easily to what was in his Soul Form—Stygian Grimoire. Every time he added a Spell Vessel to his Soul Form, a strange diagram appeared on the page containing that Spell. This strange diagram was the Spell Formation of that Spell. This was what made that Spell work. It could also be said that the Spell Formation was the Spell itself.

Spell Vessels, on the other hand, were just containers that contained the Spell Formation.

The information Soren got from the Liston Family’s Information Center was about the Spell Vessels type; Artificial and Natural. The Artificial Spell Vessels were easier to make in comparison to the Natural ones.

For Artificial Spell Vessels, one first had to know how to create an empty Spell Vessel. This was the hardest part in creating it as after one had created an empty Spell Vessel, they could simply engrave the Spell Formation of the Spell that they wanted in that vessel.

For Natural Spell Vessels, the process was quite different and more difficult; in turn, this was also more powerful of the two. Natural Spell Vessels actually had two ways of coming into existence. One was where there was no external, intelligent influence during its birth. Another was when someone intentionally intervened in the process of the Spell Vessel’s birth to create a type of Spell that they wanted.

The Spell Vessel’s birth generally occurred when certain environmental conditions met the requirements. The most important of it all was that there had to be highly concentrated Mana in that area. The Mana also had to contain a high percentage of a certain Element. The type of Spell depended on the Element which had the highest percentage in Mana; highest Water Element would give birth to Water-type spell, highest Earth Element would give birth to Earth-type Spell.

But having just these two factors was not enough. The other factor that was as important as these two was time. It took a long time for a Natural Spell Vessel to come into existence. The general process was something similar to the creation process of an Artificial Spell Vessel. In this case, the constant strikes from the Mana would start to form a basic Spell Formation on any item in that area; generally in the center of that area where the concentration of the Mana would be the highest. The creation of this basic Spell Formation was what took the most time. After this was done, the rest of the Spell Formation would follow through according to the environmental conditions and nature’s influence.

This whole process occurred naturally, what Spell it would be depended on the environment. But there was also a way to do it artificially. The way to do that was to either create such an environment or find one that already existed. Then one could engrave a basic Spell Formation of the type of Spell they wanted on any item and place it in that environment; the basic Spell Formation only decided the Element of the Spell so the rest of the Spell was created by nature itself. By doing this, the time for the creation of Natural Spell Vessels could be shortened by a lot. Also, there was no difference between these two types of Natural Spell Vessels when it came to their efficiency and power.

People generally preferred to use an empty Spell Vessel for Natural Spell Vessels. This was simply because engraving a basic Spell Formation on an empty Spell Vessel was easier than doing it on any random item. They also didn’t prefer to use rare materials for this process even though that would increase the chances of creating a Natural Spell Vessel; after all, a Spell Vessel was a consumable item.

And from this fact, Soren could tell that the Natural Spell Vessel he had—‘Create Undead’, was created under someone’s influence. It was obvious from how it looked; a gray token similar to the Darkness-type Spell Vessels.

As Soren went through all this information in his mind, the time for the last item’s auction had come; the last item being a Spell Vessel that looked like a piece of common wood.

…

“Congratulations to the one who won this bid. Now, let’s move on to the next and last item on the list.” Logan said his usual sentence.

“This last item is a Natural Spell Vessel that was born without any external, intelligent influence.” Logan continued and explained the item which was a rare thing for him to do. Maybe it was because the item was truly that rare, or maybe it was just because he was ecstatic that auction was finally coming to an end; regardless of the reason, he continued his explanation.

“A Wood and Light, dual Element type Spell Vessel. From that, you guys can tell that there is a high chance that it would contain a Healing type of spell. I am sure I don’t have to explain how powerful a Natural Healing-type spell could be. So, let’s start the bidding for this last item. Its starting price is set at 5000 Mana Crystals and the minimum increment is set at 500 Mana Crystals.” Logan finished his explanation as the bidding war for the last item started.

The bids started coming one after another, new one beating the last one. It was unlike any other bidding war where people could take part because they were slightly interested. The undetermined bids from these kinds of people would get swallowed before it would even make it to the big screen. All the Families and Organizations that were gathered there were increasing the bids as if there was no tomorrow. This war had no place for Soren and those Rogue Initiators. Only the ones with a huge background and support could even dream of taking part in this bidding war. Only they could buy this item and keep it from changing hands; willingly or unwillingly. Just having enough Mana Crystals was not enough.

At this point, people like Soren, who had participated in spiking the price for the items were just hoping that things would get more chaotic, giving them a chance for a clean getaway. Although the probability of someone from the Family attacking them when getting out was very small, it was still better to run away while those Families were busy fighting for this Spell Vessel. Just because the Families and the Organizations didn’t specifically know who had increased the price of the items didn’t mean that they would just let everyone go. It was better to just get away while they were busy doing their stuff. Because if they missed this chance then not only would those Families be hunting them for what they did, they would also take out their anger of not being able to buy the last Spell Vessel on them; after all, only one Family or Organization could buy it, others had to lose.

…

As they were hoping for, the situation inside the hall became more and more chaotic. It was to the point where the Rank 1 Initiators were releasing their pressure one after another. Fortunately, their target was not Soren and those Rogue Initiators. The high ranking Initiators fought amongst themselves without paying any attention to Soren and the others. Even the Initiators from the ‘Myriad Items’ had chosen not to interfere with this.

The bids kept coming on and beating the last one as the Initiators fought with their auras. Soren looked around to check the other people that were in the same situation as him while trying to decide the right time for the getaway. After a few seconds, he saw some movement around him. He was sure this was the right time as he swiftly got up from his seat and made his way out. His actions combined with some other people ended up creating a domino effect. Following them, everyone that was not taking part in the final auction stood up from their seat and started making their way out.

The whole hall was in chaos as more and more people started walking out. Soren had already slowed down his actions after getting up. He didn’t want to take any chance by being in the front of this crowd. After all, even if those Families and Organizations were busy with the auction, they could still take note of those that started going out first. Although he had already covered his face with his jacket hood, there was still a risk that they could recognize him. Mixing in the crowd was the best move here which Soren chose to make.

…

Going out of the hall with the crowd, Soren made his way towards another room. This was the place where everyone could get the items that they won in the auction; they could also pay the amount here using Mana Crystals if they hadn’t done so using the screen panel before.

Because of the huge crowd, the whole process was taking a lot of time. Fortunately for Soren, those that had registered for the card before had a separate room inside for receiving their items. Soren easily found the room with the help of a staff member who was standing outside the room to guide them.

It took some time but finally, Soren received all his items. He swiftly kept them all in his bag and made his way out, with his face hidden. The auction for the last item was also on its last leg by now. The bids had slowed down considerably and many high ranking Initiators had backed off from the fight.

Although Soren and the others didn’t know the exact details of what was going on inside the hall, they could still guess that it was about to end. So, they increased their speed and started going out of the building.

Soren, once again, mixed in the crowd and made his way out; his heart pounding due to the excitement. He finally had everything that he needed to become free. He could finally break those chains and go wherever he wanted. He could finally see the world from the eyes of a Rank 1 Initiator.

But as these thoughts filled his mind; as his steps took him outside; as the sunlight that reflected from the ground blinded his eyes; a voice reached his ears which shattered everything.

“Soren, you also came for the auction?”

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