Chapter 342: Getting Busy at the Auction House

The day had finally come where the system update would happen. At the moment it was only a little over half an hour away and everyone in the hub city seemed to be exited as they flooded the streets. Everyone was back in the hub city and avoiding going down to earth and dungeon diving. Territory wars were not possible for the day since the system didn't want anything to interrupt the start of the system update. It was going to be a busy day and Joshua had already figured out where he would be heading first.

Joshua knew that the arena would definitely be the most popular new attraction to check out. It wasn't just an add-on or a display board, but an entirely new portion of the city being opened up for people to explore. He knew that several people would flood into the area just to check it out while the explorers would mostly be heading to the arena to see if they could sign up to fight the moment they figure out that they can get system points for competing and winning. Joshua planned to check out the arena after a while, but he'd wait for the first wave of people to settle down before he headed over himself.

When it came to the power ranking board Joshua wasn't expecting as many people to rush to that area. The power rankings really only mattered to the explorers and that only included the top level explorers to make things even more specific. It only showed the top hundred people in the power rankings so there was no need for most explorers in the hub city to even go check it out unless they wanted to see who was at the top of the power rankings. It was also possible to see your place on the overall local power rankings through the system without even going to look at the large board near the job center, so Joshua wasn't worried about that.

That left the auction house as the first place that Joshua wanted to check out. He knew that there would be several people working for their guilds going there to check out the changes and see if they could take advantage of them, but Joshua already had a plan for what he was going to do there. If he wanted things to go well then he'd need to get there early so that he could get as much as he could from the auctions before the prices started getting hiked up from having several more people getting involved. Most guilds were just inspecting the place for now, but he planned to take full advantage of it.

That's why Joshua got up early and headed for the auction house before the system update took place. The rest of his guild members were headed to the arena to check things out and hopefully save some kind of seating for Joshua when he joined them later. When he got to the auction house there was around ten minutes before the system update would take place. There were several people there, but not to much more than normal since it wasn't the newest thing around to check out. The people that were there had been basically living at the auction house whenever they were in the hub city. They all worked for guilds trying to sell off their own stuff while getting the best deals they could from the auctions.

Joshua didn't spend too much of his time at the auction house before because he knew that the things he could gain from a local auction would be limited. Most of the resources that were put up were things that he could easily find on his own or with the help of the alliance so there was no real reason to waste money on such materials in the auction house. Most of the skills he had found from the auction house before would have been a waste of time if he tried to level them up, but now he figured people from other hub cities would be willing to sell of some decent skills for system points as long as they sold them outside of their own hub cities.

With a minute left before the system update took place everyone in the area stopped their chattering and focused on the large screen outside of the auction house. The moment the auction house opened alongside the start of the system update Joshua was able to notice the changes that took place. The billboard connected to the auction house had two sections to it. The first section included all the usual sets of items that were put up to be bid on divided into separate categories. The second half however was filled with something similar, but for the moment it was still all blank. The main difference between the two was simply two words. Local and international were the only things that were different for the two sides of the billboard.

While everyone was busy examining the billboard Joshua made his way into the auction house to get to business. When he got inside the first thing he noticed was that the billboard wasn't the only thing that changed about the auction house. The entire inside of the place had changed. The surrounding area around the outside was the same with small shops for people to sell things and all sorts of vendors to take advantage of the amount of people that would be in the area. The inside however seemed far more luxuries than Joshua thought it would have been.

There were several uniformed robots from what Joshua could tell that were waiting for people to enter. When Joshua approached the front desk one of the robots made its way over to him before talking. It had the appearance of a blond female with a confident smile. "Welcome to the auction house. Would you like a private room where you can buy and sell items through the auction house or would you like to do so in the hall?"

Joshua turned and looked at the robot that was hard to tell apart from a human. It mimicked there movements and facial expression almost perfectly. The only reason Joshua was certain that it was a robot in the first place was because it's eyes were fairly expressionless and the fact that it was working for a primarily system owned business. "Take me to a private room please." Joshua responded.

The robot nodded before leading the way to a door at the back of the auction hall. When Joshua followed through the door he noticed it worked like one of the system portals and lead him to a room that was completely separate from the auction hall. The room was similar to the ones found in the blue print store, but far more spacious and with refreshments to eat and drink while waiting for items to be put up for auction.

Joshua quickly took a seat as the robot left him alone in the room. He pulled up the system and connected to the auction house right away to get started. The first thing Joshua did was sell off several items and materials that his guild had acquired, but didn't actually need. Since he was putting it all up for auction in the international system it would be much harder for the local guilds to be able to get it from the auction. Other hub cities would find more value in things they can't get in their area, thus boosting up the price of his goods. Local guilds wouldn't want to waste the system points.

After putting all of the things he wanted to up for sale Joshua moved on to looking through what other people had put up for sale on the international auction. Luckily the basic international auction worked the same way as the basic local auction. There was a thirty minute time frame where someone could try to outbid your bid before you are awarded the item. As the price goes up on the item there are thresholds where the time frame to outbid someone gets smaller and smaller. People can also set a price to where you can straight up by the item without having to outbid someone, but that price is usually outrageous.

Knowing how it all worked Joshua started to glance through all of the different items that were being made available on the international portion of the auction. He spent the next hour glancing through different skills and spells that might be useful for his new recruits. He wouldn't use his personal money for that, but would use some of the guilds savings instead. Anything he wanted for himself he would buy on his own. Of course he expected those he got good skills for to pay the guild back eventually with their efforts in dungeons so he was too worried about wasting the guilds money.

In the end Joshua ended up spending two hours in the auction house outbidding the few others that were after the things he wanted. The reason there weren't to many people going after the skills he was going for was because of the fact that each of the skills he had gained for his recruits had what seemed like weaknesses to them.

When it came to the skill he had gotten for Ivan the strength of the skill that got Joshua's interest in the first place was the fact that the skill increased the range of all long range attacks for tank roles. This would solve Ivan's issue of not being able to attack from a distance to get the enemies attention before they could go after the rest of the group. Combine this skill with energy slash and you've got a winner. The draw back was the long cool down of a minute to reuse the extra range. Joshua was certain as the level of the skill went up the cool down would shrink, but for now it would be a decent fight starter for Ivan.

For Victor Joshua found a skill that he knew no one else would want so he got it for fairly cheap even if it was at the highest potential for the skill. The skill would damage the user while being used which was the main reason no one would wat to use it, but it would also grant the user a fifty percent boost in strength. This skill went extremely well with Victor's soul beast ability and would put him in a powerful state while it was being used even if he did get injured from using it. They would just to make sure that the healers kept an eye on him while the skill was in use. It only lasted for a minute and had a ten minute cool down, but it was the trump card Victor needed for more challenging fights.

The spell that Joshua was able to find Robin was the most expensive item he had to pay for because its drawback wasn't all that unusual for such a powerful spell. It was a spell that created a powerful strike of lightning that would do massive damage to the enemy. The strike could either be concentrated so it singled in on one enemy or more diluted and spread out so that it could hit more targets. The only drawback was the long channel time to cast the spell just like all other powerful mage spells. It was perfect for Robin so Joshua didn't worry about the amount of system points it would take to get it.

For the bard couple he got the both of them the same skill. It was a skill that generates a shield around the user while channeling a spell or ability. Most people stayed away from the skill because the moment a mage or healer stopped channeling a spell or ability the shield would disappear. Plus the shield drained a bit of mana from the user while in use. It seemed like a waste outside of being useful against large area attacks in most people's eyes.

This was different for the bard couple since whenever they played their music it was always considered channeling. The shields would be up the entire time they were playing their music which would be throughout an entire fight as long as they were well protected. It was a good last line of defense for them to have. With that Joshua was happy with the hall he had brought in.