Ch 127. A certain nosy showgirl

I nearly choked when I heard this was as expensive as my own items, giving it an appraisal to see why. Increased lifespan by one year and a permanent increased affinity with water magic. No wonder. I only knew the basics about magic, but I knew enough that affinity was the major factor behind what magic you were capable of using. Most commoners didn't have an affinity above 1 or 2%, but the baseline for mages started at about 10%. Anything under that and you were basically magically inept, only by consuming expensive reagents like these and through longterm study was it possible to raise your own affinity.

I was tempted by the description, mostly out of curiosity, but seeing it quickly rise in price to over three thousand, my thoughts of competing quickly faded.

"Mermaid heart, sold to room 21 for 3200 gold."

I let out an impressed whistle, looking out across the venue hall to the tinted viewing box with the number 21 on it. The auction was setup like an orchestra hall. All of the bidding rooms were positioned on terraces positioned around the edges of the room and elevated above the actual bidding stage, giving us an all round good view of any items.

Longevity items seemed to be the most popular, garnering a good amount of bids with consumables for magical aptitude coming a close second. Most noble families were mage families after all.

I watched again with interest as a fire attribute molten golem core was put up for sale and ended up going for over a thousand gold. After watching several such items I had learned a bit of the price trends.

Affinity increasing items were universally expensive, but fire and earth seemed to be the cheapest of all the attributes. I knew from Marcella that fire and earth were also the most common affinities people had, making these the most popular. Most monsters that manifested magic had one of these types. Water was rarer among humans, but happened more in populations that lived around major water bodies. The capital seemed to meet that threshold with the presence of x river and water affinities were still quite common among the mage geneologies here, albeit rarer than the first two types but the affinity items being all from aquatic monsters made these items universally more expensive. Air was the next most common, extremely rare, extremely valuable.

Air affinity monsters were a nightmare to hunt, they were essentially immune to any projectile weapons while also living primarily in an environment far away from humans. Hunting them was considered futile and any items that appeared at auction seemed to all be a product of sheer luck. Even if there weren't a terribly high amount of wind affinity magicians, 1-2% of the mages at most, the total lack of affinity items made for an astoundingly fierce bidding war.

That's why when the magic core was from a giant bird species was wheeled out, the atmosphere in the hall changed immediately. Placing bids back and forth until the price quickly heated up over over 8000 gold. At that point most of the families seemed to have hit their price ceiling, the younger generation was valuable, but 8000 gold was a lot of money for something that basically had the same effect as a 1000g earth affinity core. Wind elementalists could only curse their poor luck for having such an inconvenient affinity.

There were other affinities of course, life, death, and void were the other main types, but these were generally not practiced for a multitude of reasons. Nearly everyone had some amount of life affinity, technically it would be the most common mage type out there if not for the fact that it had some nasty connotations to it. Life practioners mainly dealt with vitality and bodily function, but vitality was something that couldn't be replicated easily. Not using mana at least. You either needed to use your own lifeforce to power a spell, or more commonly, the lifeforce of others. This is where the beastkin's ritual magic came in. Blood magic. Probably the best known application of life affinity.

Death magic on the other hand was quite rare, much rarer than air but just as banned. Given that it even a beginner acolyte could accidently turn a city into a raving undead horde it was not the type of magic that society could allow.

And then there was void... my space magic. Supposedly this should be my best affinity, but given that all my magic was generated using the system, I somewhat doubted that I had any aptitude at all. Extraordinarily rare but also a national asset to any kingdom.

Cal elbowed me, waking me from my ruminations. "They're selling our items."

The stage now had small crates, each stocked with five vials of blood. Seperated out into bidding blocks. It appeared that people would be bidding on each of the crates, and the bidding would be sequential. The announcer introduced it mainly as we had described it, an 'unknown' magical beast's blood, but played up its effects and rarity, not that I was complaining. The first crate went for 6k gold, but quickly dropped afterwards. The last one going for half that. It turned out to be a far more profitable method than direct sale, even after factoring in the cut they would take off an auction.

No sooner than the auctioneers had finalized the sale did a knock sound out on the door to our suite.

Opening to reveal the same bunny-outfitted showgirl that had led us in the first time, along with another colleague of hers who was busy adjusting the fabric between her thigh gap, reacting with surprise that we had opened the door sooner than she had been expecting.

"Um... esteemed sirs, we have your money prepared from tonight's auction." The dark-blonde haired girl held out a black metalic card as if urging for me to take it.

"What is this?" I asked while examining the matt black surface.

"It's our members card. You can take these to any bank in the city, it's registered to your names with a balance of 33,250 gold." She said while pausing to check the card's surface, somehow able to distinguish how much money was on it.

"Why can't we just receive our gold directly? We did that last time..."

She looked at a loss, trying her best to explain her employers policies. Apparently the auction venue didn't like having to distribute so much gold all in one night. Dealing with one person's money was fine, but dealing with such large quantities for hundreds was a lot of risk.

"Um... sir, you're a space mage right? I heard you were... and well, you're just really young for a mage. Are you enrolled in the academy by chance?"

I stared at her, trying to discern what she wanted.