Chapter 17 - Different Prizing

Tom spent the night at the farm. While eager to have a trip down memory lane, he ended up too tired to do anything at all.

The next chance to do it came the first thing in the morning. He had nothing in his schedule and absolute freedom to do anything he wanted.

Tom went to the local hub.

Because there was one thing, one thing he vaguely remembered and wanted to check personally.

'I forgot how nice it is to have a trip like that,' Tom thought while slightly speeding on the highway. So early in the morning, this remote pass barely had any other vehicles. Seated on his old-school motorbike, Tom nearly had the entire road for himself.

The distance between Tom's farm and the nearby city was quite large. Even on the bike, he still took nearly half an hour to get there.

'It's still hard to believe...' Tom muttered when he drove by the hub, aiming for the parking. 'Even in a city this small, this thing looks exactly the same.' Grim thoughts filled Tom's mind.

Not too far in the past, he would just get curious about that fact before dismissing the matter. 'I changed, didn't I?' Tom thought to himself, leaving the bike and walking towards the building. "Now I understand," Tom said to himself, pressing the doors open.

Silence.

It was no wonder. Even with all the local villages included, there were hardly enough people to fill the main hall of the building. 'Most of them are somewhere else, so it only makes sense,' Tom thought when he couldn't spot a single living soul in the entire hall.

Not wasting his precious time, Tom moved forward. Not to the playroom, not yet. Right now, Tom moved deeper into the compound. Soon, his destination became apparent.

'If I recall right, the difference in the price of the items on the auctions is insane,' Tom thought, pushing open the doors to the auction hall. Straight away, likely half of all the players revealed their location.

"I will pay... two hundred!" A random player said.

"Two fifty!" Someone bid higher.

"Two fifty once, twice, and sold!" the mechanic voice of the AI announced, displaying the official nickname of the lucky winner of the auction.

"Next item, Solar Shield!" the Ai announced once again, this time putting a description of the item on display.

'Not bad...?' Tom glanced at the stats of the item, only to open his eyes wide. 'Something like this could easily reach several million back in the city.' Tom struggled to accept the insanity of the situation only for a short moment.

'It seems I was right,' he thought, watching how the precious shield was auctioned off for measly hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

"Stacking Bone-knife! Starting price, fifty thousand!" the AI continued its job without a moment of respite.

"Hundred." Tom raised his card high enough for the ever-present cameras to catch its ID. It didn't matter that he lost his avatar in another hub. All that mattered was that the money was there to pay.

"Hundred once, hundred twice, and sold!" The AI responded quickly, while quite a few local players turned their eyes to Tom.

'What the hell was that?' He held his face steeled, doing his absolute best not to show the shock on it. Stacking bone-knife, an item worth easily half a million on the big market would go for measly hundred thousand here!

'Well, that confirms my theory,' Tom thought, reading the detailed description of his newly purchased weapon. It turned out to be exactly the same knife that Tom saw in use by some of the higher-ranked rouges back in the city.

In the dungeon, it was pretty easy to obtain any weapon one would desire. For the price of a single data stone, one could purchase a basic weapon of any kind... but it would hardly aid one in combat in any way.

On the contrary, there were random drops. A weapon of better grade could only appear along with the data stones in roughly one out of a hundred raids.

There was no strict rule as to what one was supposed to do with such a drop. The tradition dictated to put every drop on the auction, as there was only a tiny chance a drop would fit the class of the player that would get it.

'I don't think I will have any use of this dagger myself, though,' Tom thought as he discarded the status window of the item from his membership device. With how much he earned, wasting a measly hundred thousand just to confirm a theory was more than a fair price.

Tom didn't dwindle on the topic any longer, opting to head for the playroom instead. Soon, he made his way into the area before heading to the counter.

Contrary to the other hub, he wasn't an active user here, forcing him to reserve a seat in advance rather than having one permanently reserved for himself.

'Okay, let's see how it feels to play from the mid-levels again,' Tom thought to himself, fulfilling the standard procedure at the spot he received at the counter.

A mere moment later, he was supposed to appear in the same white lobby as usual... Then the truth dawned on him.

"Fuck, they don't have the privacy implemented!" Tom said in shock, as the colorful inn filled with adventurers straight from some kind of isekai novel appeared in front of his eyes.

'Well,' after an initial shock passed, Tom got back to his senses. "It's not like it changes anything,' he thought before shrugging his arms. He then moved deeper into the busy lobby and pressed the gate of the dungeon open.