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    “ow.” june whispered as alicia kicked her shin. “already? will left.”

    “you told me to kick you when things look tense.” she whispered, her glowing blue eyes locked on the shadowed booth above them. “they look tense.”

    “…tell me when they start killing each other.” june said, going back to her preparations for a ‘successful’ auction.

    up above them, will was navigating the murky social scene, shaking each of the lord’s hands – except rotwitch – before making his way to his seat.

    “so…” will said, glancing to his left and right as he sat. mark wyrd gave him a studiously neutral expression, while nephir paled and glanced away.

    “my name’s william oh, honor to meet you.” will said, shaking mark’s hand. naturally their coverup of oilton meant they’d never officially ‘met’.

    “likewise. you have a remarkable talent for single combat, mr. oh,” mark said giving will a short, painful squeeze before letting go.

    “thank you!” will beamed the way he thought a simple orphan would at the direct complement.

    “we’ve already met,” nephir said, trying to avoid eye contact as will wiggled his hand under the nuker’s nose. nephir finally relented and shook his hand to make the encounter end quicker. the nuker wasn’t a person, per se, it was just hard to be civil to someone who’d humiliated you that badly, that recently.

    mark had distance from the event and a fa?ade to maintain, so he was better at it.

    will sat down between the two of them, the gazes of the lords in the room raking across his body like hot irons.

    after a few minutes of strained conversation between the three young climbers, the lights in the auction house dimmed as a servant swept by and turned them off, signaling the beginning of the auction.

    will thought, smiling a bit as he glanced around watching the audience below shift and begin whispering to each other.

    will glanced down at the stage, an orb of light forming above and beaming straight down on the stage, just as a familiar young woman stepped up onto the stage.

    will thought sourly, half-tempted to give a petty booing.

    “is this the announcer you have?” will muttered to himself, nebulously addressing the city without thinking too hard about who was listening.

    “it’s a big city, but it’s not big,” baron akul whispered back across his son, leaning forward to see will. “you try paying for a person to make it safely to this floor with nothing but voice enhancements.”

    “no offence meant…sir,” will hastily retracted his statement.

    “none taken,” the baron said with a grin before disappearing behind his aging son. luis was silently chuckling to himself and shaking his head.

    “in this auction, over the next three hours you will bear witness to a selection of some of the most powerful relics and sacrifices to grace the fifth floor.”

    “the attendants will now be handing out the final itinerary for tonight’s auction.”

    a servant slipped a piece of paper in front of each of them with professional haste.

    will’s brows rose as he skimmed down the list, gaze lingering on ‘uru drake scale’ before moving on.

    “i don’t really know what half of these things are,” will said, motioning to the dimensional oyster, and reinforcing awl.

    “the dimensional oyster is a monster whose sacrifices are nearly as valuable as the uru drake. while it’s sacrifice doesn’t often grant dimensional powers directly, it has a tendency to empower them, apply a powerful defensive boost or even a growth-like effect to an ability.” mark offered.

    “you see these?” nephir said, leaning over and pointing to about a chunk of about a dozen items on will’s list simply marked ‘pearl one through fourteen’.

    “yeah?”

    “sometimes when climbers defeat a dimensional oyster, it’ll have pearls inside it. these aren’t normal pearls. they’re typically the effects of climbers who have been eaten by the monster. rather than spit them out, the dimensional oyster forms a sheath of nacre around these irritating objects. this sheath of nacre protects the oyster from the irritating sharp edges of things like blades, buckles or jewelry.”

    “so like…giant, sword-shaped pearls?”

    “not exactly, because these pearls actually reduce the size of the object inside, growing smaller and more spherical with each layer until the offending object simply vanishes.” nephir said.

    beside them, mark made a ‘poof’ gesture without looking away from the stage.

    “the pearls for sale today are the size of those a noblewoman might wear around her neck, indicating either the item inside the pearl is small, or they’ve been encased in dimensional nacre for years. if you crack open a tiny pearl and it had a relic in it bathing in dimensional energies for years, the chances are good it has picked up an extra affix related to dimensional abilities, making it extremely valuable.” nephir continued.

    “so the pearls are….gambling.” will said.

    “more or less. who doesn’t like a mystery box?” mark said with a shrug.

    “it may be gambling, but it’s one of the few things that isn’t rigged.” nephir said.

    mark grunted acknowledgement. “but as soon as someone finds a way to do it...” he shook his head.

    the cynicism on display from these young men only a handful of years older than will warmed his paranoid heart.

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    will relaxed in his seat and took the long view on the sacrifice: nice to have, but not critical. today’s primary mission was to improve mason and travis’s build in preparation for the 6th floor and beyond.

    “now that our attendants have handed out the itinerary and you’ve had a chance to review it, we’ll begin with item number one! a mutated set of bracers of shielding!”

    the announcer motioned to the side and stepped aside as an attendant rolled a glass case on wheels out, revealing a simple set of bracers that had a bronze glow to them under the spotlight.

    she began reading the details.

    interesting, but it wasn’t vital to any of his party member’s build.

    will settled back in his chair and let the auction unfold, waiting for the items that loth decided to bid on.

    eventually the attendants rolled an ornate staff forward, and loth jumped into the bidding.

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    bidding rose to a fever pitch as loth was rapidly, almost punitively, outbid by several rich families.

    loth didn’t let her emotions get the better of her and simply stopped raising her bid as soon as they hit the limit of what she was willing to spend on a single relic for their nuker.

    after that, will was interested to see that loth shifted her strategy and began bidding more freely on most of the items that came on the stage. each time, a table with more money than sense bid the item above what it was worth, and loth would stop bidding before she won.

    will knew what she was doing: she was depleting everyone else’s budget – if they even had one – and masking which items she really wanted versus which ones she was bidding up solely to gouge her competitor’s pockets.

    will was fairly sure he wouldn’t have handled it as well.

    through this masking technique, loth was able to acquire three pearls for next to nothing, when no one else had the appetite to jump in on a gamble after flexing their wealth on multiple occasions before.

    she also bought a sacrifice for travis for cheap: the wings of the iber fly that buzzed in the ear of its victims, causing them to go mad and attack things they shouldn’t, getting them killed and allowing the iber to lay its eggs in the carrion.

    there was a torso relic similar to the cloak of misty escape that improved stealth and added the option of adding a fog cloud effect to every active ability use, for the slippery rogue types.

    will was perfectly happy with the cloak of the fade, but it was a bit painful watching such a nice item pass by.

    will thought to himself, keeping an eye on frederick wyrd as the man idly tapped his gilded bone scepter against his knee.

    from what will knew about mark’s build…

    that was what made sense to will about the lord’s drumming on his knee.

    without knowing more about what that bone scepter did, will wasn’t able to make a good guess.

    it looked…holier than the wicked knife that mark had cut himself with. relics focused on thorns and blood-for-blood type effects had an evil look to go with it.

    this thing wouldn’t look out of place in the hands of a healer. the bone wasn’t carved into wicked scenes of horror, instead it was minimally altered, with the gold serving to protect the bone and enhance its natural beauty.

    will still didn’t feel like he fully grasped the gimmick.

    even if it was stored damage, it would only hit once, and if the other guy resisted, he could just…run away.

    the biggest weakness of the thorns build was that it required the opponent to participate in the fight. if he just ran away, few thorns builds had the damage output to kill them before they could escape.

    gotta

    mark’s fingers nudged will’s, and will kept his eyes on the stage as he felt a piece of paper slip under his fingers.

    making sure no one else was looking, will glanced at the note.

    …

    will disappeared the note into his phantom hand.

    it was an infinite loop.

    frederick wyrd chose a target, triggered his voodoo ability, tapped his knee, then the tiny amount of damage hit his opponent. that damage was revisited on frederick by the rod, which then was visited back on his opponent again. and again. and again… all the while, his lifesteal healing was boosted by the rod’s healing bonus, above 100%.

    so frederick wyrd walked away perfectly fine and the other person…kept taking damage until they couldn’t technically take any damage anymore…

    his lifesteal could be 50% or below, and he would still win the exchange as long as his resistance was higher than his opponent.

    it was only the thorns effect that truly needed to be 100% or higher.

    if it was below 100%, each successive damage exchange would be weaker than the one before it, rather than stronger and stronger in an escalating damage explosion.

    that would be the most effective way to neuter the lord’s build.

    will glanced at frederick’s headband, which had a drop of blood in amber in the center.

    the wyrd patriarch’s amulet was tucked beneath his shirt, and his fingers were covered by thick gloves.

    beside will, mark wyrd tapped his left middle finger, seemingly bored at the litany or rare objects marching past them. will hoped he was giving will a hint and not just bored.

    a familiar scale the size of two palms was rolled out into the spotlight, and the bidding he’d assumed had been frenzied before was suddenly a bloodbath, accelerating beyond anything he’d seen.

    when the final bid rolled in, will hadn’t realized that much money even the winning table took their leave then and there to go settle accounts and get their hands on the uru drake scale as quickly as possible.

    strangely, the wyrd patriarch didn’t seem too interested in it.

    all of the lord’s bidding patterns were strange, as they seemed to put high value on things that had no particular direct use to them. outliers, really. they didn’t seem to want anything for themselves, as they already had highly polished builds that didn’t have a single place to improve.

    will only realized what they were bidding on when an otherwise normal steel-skin potion went for five-thousand ten-pieces, to ghoul.

    steel-skin potions weren’t…terribly expensive, so why would they be at an auction for the rare and unusual? and why so much…

    will’s eyes widened.

    that one item had just been a too out-of-place and on-the-nose, and allowed will’s mind to pierce the veil.

    will quickly scanned the auction itinerary and found carrie near the bottom, a pair of fashionable long-boots with a charm effect whose power level didn’t belong in the auction.

    “so ummm…are you guys actually bidding on ” will couldn’t help but whisper past nephir. he’d seen the priests for sale in the temple of andover, but this was…

    “hah. sort of. not exactly.” the baron’s aging son said, reaching past nephir to tousle will’s hair.

    “you’re quick, though, william.” baron akul said. “my friends here are bidding to the others from approaching them with an offer of vassalage. we can’t talent to go one way or another, but if they only receive offer and other lords give them the cold shoulder…”

    “they’re nudged in the direction of the winner…”

    “this city produces more talent than i could ever use,” akul said, “so we decided to develop a non-violent way to recruit, and all agreed to it. easier and more plentiful than fighting over scraps.”

    will nodded, humming to himself.

    “…can bid on someone?” will asked, scanning for some sign that loth was on the list but not finding any. nor any sign of alicia or mason.

    as will scrolled further down the list, he found a small cuirass of modest power that looked like it could only fit a child…or bee.

    “knock yourself out,” the baron said, leaning back in his seat.

    during the entire exchange, frederick wyrd ignored them, his attention was on the itinerary, the drumming against his knee accelerating.

    will’s heart began to beat hard enough for him to feel it in his temples.

    “and now, ladies and gentlemen, a rare drop from the sixteenth floor. a complete dimensional oyster, preserved magically and divided into a dozen high-quality sacrifices. a perfect sacrifice for dimensional abilities, growth and crafting abilities!

    when the dozen or so dimensional oyster sacrifices were rolled out onto the stage, frederick wyrd gave a tiny inhale, his limbs tensed to the most minute degree as he drummed on his knee.

    will slipped the ring of eidolons out of the phantom hand and had it on his finger in the blink of an eye before interposing the hand between the rod and the lord’s knee in the exact instant everyone felt a wave of charge travel through frederick’s body.