The day after Hamuls attack.
After we consulted with Velmeria, we came to the auction site as planned. Velmeria asked us to take part in the auction, they judged that spending time normally will not interfere with Count Bailleys operation.
What we are aiming for today is magic stones.
『Our first target is the Goblin King's magic stone』
「Nn」
In most auctions, the name of the demon beast that own their magic stone is known by prior appraisal.
But, i don't really know about the skill used. Well, it's meaningless information for ordinary people. Even my appraisal with Heavenly Eye skill doesn't reveal the skill sealed in a magic stone.
Maybe there is a special skill that can analyse it, but I have never heard of it. It would be convenient if I could get my hand on it.
Therefore, what we are aiming today is a magic stone with a threat level of C or higher, or it was a magic stone of a humanoid demon beast. After all, humanoid monster is dexterous, and they are likely will learn new skill by training. Until now, goblins, orcs, demons, and other humanoid demon beasts often possessed many skills.
There's a good magic stone of a devil that will be exhibited at the end of the morning session. But there will be many people aiming for it, it will be a tough battle.
No, I have 20 million Goldes on hand, and I have no problem to just drop it all, but I don’t want to suddenly putting dozen times of the market price. If I ignored the market price, other participants and auction organizers may glared at us. Worst of all, the chance of us being too conspicuous and being noticed by Marquis Ashtner wouldn't be zero.
So, we will give up if the price went up too much.
「Shall we go then?」
「Nn」
『Fran, Listen quietly to what Codart says today』
(I know)
Actually, we are not alone today.
To keep a low profile, we had a representative prepared by adventurer's guild. If a child like Fran make a bid on an expensive magic stone, we will stand out, and if we win a number of bids, they will definitely look for our identity.
When we consulted with Eliante who was really concerned about us, she introduced us to some adventurers ho are familiar with the auction.
Codart is a rank E adventurer, he has an appraisal skill and was originally working as an auctioneer. But he has been longing to be an adventurer for many years, he has an interesting career by becoming an adventurer by equipping himself with the money he has saved.
Therefore, he was also a late-blooming adventurer who was already 35 years old, he's not young anymore. But still, he had climbed to rank E. He seems to be having fun doing things like getting rid of small fry and doing chores in this royal capital.
He also admired a strong adventurer, and so he shows tremendous polite attitude toward Fran. He seems to have a deep respect for Fran, who has a nickname for herself at young age.
Eliante seems to have introduced Codart to us with that in mind.
「Then, it's good for us to win the bid for the items on this list, right?」
「Onegai」
While sitting next to him, the bid will be made by Codart. The items to bid in advance are decided by looking at the catalogue. We decided an upper limit after consulting with Codart. We planned to have Codart won a bid within that limit.
If an item on our list exceeded our upper limit, Fran will secretly call him out with wind magic and tell him how much to exceed.
If something else we want comes out, we will make a successful bid by our self. It's rather strange to come to an auction site and not bid on anything.
It seems there are several products that are not listed in the catalogue exhibited today, and a mysterious magic stone that even an expert could not appraise are exhibited, so we are aiming for it.
「Are you sure you want a special seat?」
「Nn」
Because you are allowed to eat and drink over there. We take a seat in the special seat corner with Codart, and we'll just leave the rest to him.
Normally, in such a case, a representative should be paid a percentage of the difference between the prepared upper limit amount and the winning bid amount, but Codart put a fairly low price for us.
Instead, he suggested that Fran would go out for training with him once, that's why we hired Codart on that condition.
We just trained with Codart early this morning. To be honest, it's a little late to become an adventurer at the age of 30. However, he is very serious and has some guts. So, if he continues with his training, he will be able to go a little higher.
Today, I was teaching him the feeling of using martial arts, we showed how Fran unleashed her martial arts and letting him receive it with a stance while holding sword, and Codart was pretty impressed with it.
It seems that he was glad that an adventurer who was far stronger than him gave him a serious guidance. No matter how many times he was sent rolling by Fran, he seems to be smiling happily.
「Then, leave the rest to me」
「Nn」
1 hour later.
「I managed to win the goblin king」
「Munch munch」
「Next is the devil's magic stone that appears early in the afternoon huh」
「Munch munch」
While listening to Codart's words, Fran continues to ate the rice balls in her hands. I thought it would be bad to serve a strong-smelling food, so I told Fran to only eat rice balls and sandwiches.
By the way, today onigiri ingredients are tuna mayo made from grilled tuna and spicy seaweed similar to kelp.
Even so, I never thought that goblin king magic stones would be so expensive.
The Auctioneer explained at the beginning of the bid that 「It is a magic stone of the goblin king who able to use life magic endlessly to heal himself, this is the magic stone of the goblin who has tormented the adventurer! 」 I ended up giving instruction to Codart to push for it.
The winning bid amount is 2 million Goldes. It is more than four times the market price of a goblin king magic stone.
Apparently, some magic stone mania was competing for it.
Which ever the world is, there are collectors in every world, and it seems that there are magic stone mania who collect everything in the world of magic stones. What they want is a rare magic stone. Or a magic stone with a beautiful shape.
Magic stone shape are varying and most of it have a distorted shape. However, there are rarely magic stone that are well shaped like a cut gemstone.
Magic stones cannot be polished. No, it can be polished, but if it is damaged, its magical power will be greatly lost. Then, its value will decrease and even lost. For that reason, a naturally beautiful shaped magic stones are extremely rare. Therefore, it is said that the price of high-ranked demon beast stones with beautiful shape tends to rise.
I don't think magical powers matter if you just use it as decoration or collection, but a magic stones collector doesn't seem to think so. They preferred a powerful magic stone and have beautiful shapes. That was exactly the magic stone of this goblin king.
The magic stones that are put up for auction are like a collection of gems, so it seems that the winning bid cannot be estimated from the rank alone. I was told about that by Codart in advance, but i realized once again the difficulty of an auction.
『The devil's magic stone is in the afternoon…I wonder how it will goes』
