Chapter 216

Chapter 216

April arrived back in the Minkalla system with a sigh.

It wasnt that she disliked the place. No, she rather liked the atmosphere that permeated the carved out section of space, populated with all of the entrants of Minkalla that returned. Mostly old Tier 14s who had just gotten their Concept and were now Tier 15 and immortal. There were also teams of Pathers who went in at Tier 12 and came out with more items, skills, and abilities than they knew what to do with. The members of the military who went in to hunt down enemy combatants and protect their own sides people were also peppered in. And finally, the scions of the rich and famous who went into Minkalla for the thrill of adventure without their immortal minders watching over them made up the remainder of the gathering.The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

Anyone who came out contributed to the atmosphere of celebration and joy. Anyone who wasnt so lucky was in no position to sour the mood.

All in all, the place was bustling and frenetic, two things April enjoyed.

She just wasnt excited for her actual job.

Luna had saddled her with a rather hefty list of goods and items she wanted procured for the team. In and of itself, that wasnt unusual, but the manager had also left a large amount of the items to Aprils own discretion, which screamed test.

And passing Lunas test was vital to April's career as a liaison, trainer, and manager in her own right.

Luna was known in the Pather manager circles, and April already had three pending offers from other managers once she finished with Matt, Liz, and Aster, all as a fairly senior liaison or as a trainers assistant. Considering she was relatively new to the liaison position itself, that was an incredible step forward for her career.

But that all hinged on her successful completion of this assignment.

Which meant the free reign Luna had given her was just as much rope from which she could hang herself.

Many of the items were fairly standard. Skills of various stripes, a few natural treasures, some utility gear, maybe a backup weapon or two. She was instructed to get beneficial cracks when possible, and to keep an eye out for anything which would be particularly impactful,

It was that last part which really was the issue. There was a truly unlimited number of possible items which had the potential to help her team, and just as many which would look useful, but in truth would not suit them for some subtle reason.

Just about anything could help Matt, but at the same time, there was nothing that would be a perfect fit for the boy. Aster was a fairly typical ice mage, but was trying to branch out into some spatial and illusion capabilities for her planned evolution into an Aurora fox and beyond. Accordingly, treasures to help the girl develop her bloodline wouldnt go amiss, but were nigh impossible to find. If there were ever a time to gain an aurora-aspect natural treasure, though, now was the time.

Liz, though, was the trickiest. She was a blood warrior and mage hybrid, boasting a 50/50 essence split thanks to Back to Basics, but wasnt content as just that. Blood magic, at a minimum, was too distinctive for her to use in public, and that led to her utilizing water-colored blood, or even just fire whenever she was trying to hide her identity. Honestly, the girl was an utterly fantastic kineticist. Her fire magic as a secondary element, one which her mana aspect and Talent actively penalized, was better than many pyromancers fifty times her age. Shed also recently lost her primary source of kinesis material, with her spatial storage glove having been destroyed in Minkalla.

Fortunately, Minkalla served as one of the largest hubs of inter-Power trade in the entire Realm. Desperate Tier 14s spending all their wealth on gear to assist their delves into Minkalla, and successful delvers flush with treasure from the planet all had money and treasure to burn. Hearing that wealth begging to be spent, the Corporations answered.

Massive companies within the Great Power had dedicated their entire existence to catering to those entering and leaving Minkalla, with piles of skill shards and natural treasures being shipped in weekly alongside custom-ordered gear and even growth items. That drew even non-delvers that were in search of rare commodities to the Corporations moon, and they were, in turn, catered to with additional valuable goods from the traders wares.

It was a massive, mostly-peaceful, thriving hub of trade that drew people from even the furthest reaches of the Great Powers. Tariffs and import treaties prevented it from being outright overrun by guilds and internal companies, but for delvers and their managers, it was a functionally bottomless well of valuable resources.

April and Jeremiah stepped out of their ship onto the Empires moon, with the massive, clockwork planet hovering ominously in the sky. The eternal parties of newly-minted Tier 15s raged on in the background, with their choruses carried on distant winds over the din of the spaceport. Delvers jubilant and somber alike loaded onto the ship theyd just left, not wasting a single second in transporting as many as possible in and out of the mana-starved system.

Registering their presence was trivial, and from there, they loaded onto a Corporations shuttle branded with the MinKouriers logo, and flew to the other Great Powers moon.

It wasnt a proper moon in the truest sense. It was no planet drawn from a high-Tier rift, or even a coreless world from one of their systems. Instead, it was an utterly massive space station, artificial from its core to its surface, and held together through unimaginable amounts of engineering and artifice. The entire structure catered around it being made of Tier 0 materials, so it was never degraded by Minkallas habit of eating the essence out of its surroundings. The simple scope of it was difficult to properly visualize, but it held party venues, skill exchanges, auction houses, ship ports, and life habitats that a mortal could spend their entire life in and never see everything.

Their transport ship nestled into a massive missing chunk of the station facing away from the moon, and they joined a line of other visitors seeking much the same as them. The line moved swiftly, as the Corporations knew the value of even an immortals time all too keenly, and their procedures were simple and orderly. An AI-backed declaration of presence, affiliation, and intentions, a quick donning of the Empires insignia, and they were in. The guards, decked in shining power armor and wielding the glowing rifles that mages in the Corporations favored in place of staves, barely even gave them a glance as they passed, instead constantly vigilant for anyone foolish enough to try something, or missing their insignia.

Everyone was required to wear some form of signifier to their affiliation, be it a badge, medal, armband, coat, or as one dwarf in classic plate armor had chosen, full heraldry. Off to the side, an array of stalls and storefronts sold a number of premade items for all the Great Powers, all boasting low prices and quick custom work.

Both she and Jeremiah had known what was coming, of course, and donned their respective signifiers. April used a simple black and white armband with the Empire's emblem emblazoned on it. Simple, effective, and not too flashy, but more than enough to meet the requirement.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, went with a half cape with the insignia on his back. She considered it a bit too much, but said nothing. The other liaison had been incredibly helpful during their short time together, so as much as she disagreed with his fashion choice, she kept it to herself.

They followed the hallway and the flow of people deep into the bowels of the station. Spatial expansion this close to Minkalla would be exorbitant to try and maintain, with the greedy planet constantly seeking to drain the mana from every last rune. Eventually, the expansive tunnel, lit as much by the gleaming, illusionary advertisements for vendors as by the overhead lights, gave way to a truly massive exchange floor. From above, it looked like a hive of so many ants, teeming with skill traders moving from station to station, buying and selling skills in a bid to earn consistent profit.

As an outside agent, April didnt much care about all the endless deals and methods that traders used to try and leverage the simple exchange of goods into wealth. All she cared about was turning her rings full of Minkallan loot into Corporation Credits, and those credits into gear for her charges.

It was here that she and Jeremiah split off, melding into the human mixing pot of the Great Skill Exchange.

Nearly every skill in existence of Tier 32 or below could be bought and sold here, though April needed a constant stream of translations from her [AI] to understand what was going on. She was certain that [Channeled Projectile FI14-RN] and [Channeled Element OZ14-EL] were perfectly informative to those used to them, but they just werent memorable in the same way [Flamethrower] or [Mud Manipulation] were.

They sold just the same, though.

Most combat-relevant Tier 8 skills went for a few Corporation kilocredits, the Tier 14 skills about three to five times that, and the Tier 20 skills three to five times that.

For anything beyond that, prices tended to skyrocket, as various militaries tended to monopolize the majority of skill sales, but they could still be purchased. [Regeneration], or [Self Heal HE32-RG] may be on sale, but it would cost her 25.3401 megacredits to actually buy. The exact price kept fluctuating, but it was stable enough with its low volume.

The reverse was also true: there were high-Tier skills that were so obsolete, they were cheaper than even some Tier 8 skills. [Inventory] was one such skill, a Tier 20 skill which had been on par with [AI] for must-have skills until storage rings were invented, which allowed for nearly all the uses of the skill with none of the exorbitant reserved mana costs.

In contrast, [Bandage] commanded a price just shy of two megacredits, but the price history of the skill showed it was on a steady if slow decline. That told her more of the skills were leaking out of the Empire, but that was both inevitable as people resold for a profit and spies collected them. In the end, it wasn't her job to stop Realm-wide trade of new and exclusive skills. She just noted that she had a way to earn some more money for the kids if she needed to with the few [Bandage] skill shards they still had.

No matter the odd Tier-agnostic pricing that was everywhere, it made selling off her mountain of skills easy and fairly lucrative. A trip to the nearest exchange broker, a long time next to a skill scanner, and all of her basic skills were translated into 39.65 megacredits.

Next on the list were the endless piles of non-skill gear that theyd found in Minkalla. Fifteen sets of armor with a water-resist enchantment, seven swords enchanted with [Fire Weapon], thirty-nine wands with spell accuracy arrays, nine hundred and forty-two swords enchanted with sharpness and durability runes the list went on. Much of it was ruin-made and while not worthless, wouldnt command a premium price. Others, like the boots imbued with the ability to walk on any surface, or the throwing knife that would teleport back to the throwers hand, were custom-made gear and were where most of the real money was to be made.

There were plenty of low-level auctions going on at all times for just that sort of thing, and plenty of auctioneers ready to take on her commission for a small fee. She ended up finding a middleman who promised results with a refund guarantee that also possessed several prestigious certifications, and unloaded much of the bulk loot on her. The middleman would run around and sell her payload for a 5% fee. April knew shed lose far more than that if she tried to navigate the treacherous floors herself, and this way, she could attend the auctions that actually showed promise as a buyer, not a seller.

After that, she stopped by a different middleman to offload most of the houses and spatial items the children had obtained. The houses would take a bit of time to get appraised and sold off at auction, but it would be a large source of credits to translate into more directly usable items. Fortunately, the more numerous spatial items had more static prices per unit of usable space, and it was very nearly painless to sell them to the half-metal spider behind the counter. Spatial rings usable by low Tiers were quite difficult to make, so the rings taken from fallen delvers formed a considerable portion of the final credit tally.

With a mostly-emptied spatial ring and no particularly promising auctions in the near future, April made her way to the skill exchange, now as a buyer. The price of individual skills may have been universal, but the fees associated with getting them werent. If she could find a vendor with a given skill in stock, there were far fewer transfer fees involved, and if she could find several of the skills she was looking for as part of a single transaction, so much the better. She may not have come with a massive set of skills that she was tasked to get, but every centi-credit she could save was that much more shed have for the auctions that she had her eye on.

[Shadowstrike], or [Weapon Empowerment DK14-SE] was the first skill she found a good deal on. The vendor shed tracked down had just gotten a couple from another delver, and so was willing to sell to her for nearly market rate. It created a semi-real illusion of a lengthened blade limned in darkness that could actually cut, and most importantly, carried the enchantments of the underlying blade. Granted, both the copying and the cutting power was lessened due to the quasi-real nature of the projection, but that could be taken care of with some modifications. And if April understood the nature of Matts Courtly Warfare boon correctly, he could probably leverage it into projecting the illusion at an angle from the main blade, giving him extra flexibility with the skill.

An array of cracked skills that she didnt care for were up next- a [Cracked Shadow Dagger] that both had a decreased mana cost and could be applied to larger blades without losing potency, a [Cracked Puddle Jumper] that worked on water instead of air for a single-digit mana cost, a [Cracked Rain of Fire] that lingered for hours post-casting, a [Cracked Venom Strike] which transferred lost coordination to the caster, a [Cracked Firebolt] that was more of a siege-class spell than anything practical for delving

Eventually, [Cracked Shatter], the skill she had her eye on, came up for bidding. This version of the ice-aspected skill, instead of simply breaking ice, detonated it, creating a frozen fragmentary grenade of whatever it targeted. She actually got into a three way bid for that, but she eventually outbid both the Clan man in yellow and Republic woman in a black coat, securing it for herself. Either Aster or Matt could use that skill, and she knew it was worth the sky high price she paid for it.

After leaving the auction, she picked up a non-cracked [Tailwind] to compensate for the cracked variant she didnt purchase, and from the same vendor- an eager evolved wolf quite willing to make small talk- a [Dispelling Wind], two [Air Body]s and a [Water Body].

That left a single skill remaining on her list- [Dispelling Edge], a simple skill that helped the user cut through a skill and dispel it harmlessly instead of, for example, detonating a fireball. She sent a message to Jeremiah asking if hed found a good seller, but he replied that hed gotten a Cracked variant earlier in the week. As such, he hadnt bothered looking for a good source for the skill. He did send her a list of weapon skill vendors, and April eventually settled on the third person in the list, after the first two stated they were saving their supplies for a projected price increase. She couldnt imagine why, as the skill was already the second most-expensive one shed bought this trip. Did they really need to wait for a few more kilocredits?

After she had checked off most of the combat items she had on her list, April made her way over to the crafting and utility item vendor sections. The items they sold may have been less directly combative, though that seemingly didnt reflect in the attitudes of the people buying there. From what she could see, there didnt seem to be any actual fighting, but a dwarf woman was screaming at a man until she was red in the face over what seemed to be a substandard grade of copper, and a pair of armadillo men were arguing furiously about some minutia of enchanting that nobody else seemed to care about.

Not wanting to engage with that at the moment, April stepped into a small venue for home goods, and quickly parsed through what was on offer with her [AI]. Three copies of the homemaker bundle went into her virtual shopping basket, a collection of skills aimed at making domestic life easy. They were made up of a handful of skills for cleaning, massaging, and generally translating small amounts of mana into a basic but useful task, all for a fairly reasonable price. They had been pushing themselves hard for years now, and they all deserved a taste of the finer things in life.

Also, if she had to watch Matt manually manipulating water and soap to clean the floors one more time, she would drag him to the nearest skill vendor herself so he could get the proper tool for the job. They had too much money not to pay for small luxuries. With that in mind, she put some wheels of good cheese, wine, tea, and coffee into her basket before finalizing the purchase and moving to the next area, casting only a brief glance at two Sect men, one in pure white robes and the other in a red and gold outfit, locked in a shouting match about their honor and respective families.

In the enchanting area, the number of databases for sale was staggering, covering fields as disparate as civil engineering and veterinary care. She added a number of Tier 15 and under rune catalogs to her slate of things to get for Matt, but her attention was drawn to some of the Sect modification scrolls that somehow hadnt been bought out by the Sects themselves. That was quite the find, and she homed in on a scroll for modifying [Analyze] before bringing it up to the merchant with the cybernetic eyes.

April listened patiently as the woman talked about how the scroll would describe how to modify [Analyze] into an enchanting workhorse, giving incredible detail on the mana flows within an object, but she had to prevent herself from cackling as the merchant continued on to say how the first stage of the modification would drastically increase the maximum cost to nearly nine thousand mana per use. Yes, for a normal enchanter, that was quite the drawback, but she happened to know someone who wouldnt mind that tradeoff. Keeping her face steady, she haggled the woman down to throwing in a few enchanting skills at a discounted price to make up for the shortcomings of the skill modification, before finalizing the deal and walking out feeling like a bandit.

Her next few stops were uneventful, and she was able to translate a portion of her remaining credits into a variety of skills and tools for potions, cooking, and resource collection. Nothing terribly exciting, but the suite of skills would give them a better basis for taking their crafts to the next level.

With that taken care of, April made her way to the main auction room. Unlike most of the auxiliary auction rooms, which shed been visiting throughout her time at the moon, this one was reserved for the biggest-ticket items, was held once every three months, and always had the best stuff. Fortunately, most of her auctioned items had either already sold or were slated to appear during this auction.

That latter data point earned a smile from her, and she opened up the Review Me page of the auctioneer shed hired and gave him a five-pointed star. She had plenty of money, and most of her shopping was already done.

If there was anything excellent for her charges, shed be able to afford it.

She settled into the auction floor, finding a booth towards the middle of the rows of chairs. Strolling onto the stage was a man wearing a shiny silver bodysuit with the MinkallAuctions logo on each arm and on his chest, like some kind of parody of the Guild woman seated next to her.

Goooood evening, ladies and gentlemen, noble beasts and mighty dwarves! I am Erik Voltax, and I will be your presenter and auctioneer for this auction, brought you by MinkallAuctions: your one stop shop for the grandest treasures the Forge has to offer! We have a wonderful selection of items for you this month, courtesy of the first waves of delvers emerging victorious from the depths of Minkalla! If you havent already been able to download the bulletin for todays auction, please see an attendant! They will be happy to help you with any problems you may have. As always, we ask that you restrict your sphere of awareness to just your booths. A full, detailed breakdown for every item on sale is linked through your bulletin, and if you have any concerns about the veracity of the items you purchase here today, please contact the customer support line, whose contact information may also be found in the bulletin. And just as a reminder, all bids are final and you will be expected to settle your bill before leaving. As a courtesy notice, our lovely neighbors are often surprised at the conversion rates we offer for foreign currency, and we encourage you to check them and ensure you possess sufficient Corporation Credits before placing your bid. For more details, see our customer disclaimer which can, once again, be found linked to the auction bulletin.

With a clap, the lights around them cut off- pure showmanship, as anyone here and with the funds to buy anything would be able to see in the dark as though it were bright sunlight- and spotlights illuminated the stage as a podium rose from the ground.

We will begin our auction tonight with a Tier 14 void bracer, capable of sending out a Void Bubble Shield, currently cataloged as [Bubble Shield NM8-FF-CVZ1079]. Its mana hungry, but serves as a nigh-impenetrable shield around the caster. Bidding will begin at one megacredit. Perfect if you have a loved one thinking about heading into Minkalla in the near future.

It wasnt useful to her, so April leaned back and watched the opening bids fly. Nothing appealed to her that much in this first wave of items, as they were all Tier 14 items primarily aimed at incoming teams trying to get the best gear they could before entering Minkalla, but it was still useful to gauge the mood of the crowd.

It didnt take long before her first item for sale here appeared onstage, a Tier 14 mace with an extension enchantment on the haft that could extend out to a full seven meters, and an enchantment that empowered any metal-aspected skills cast through the weapon by thirty percent, or twice that if they were also delivered by the weapon.

She had other items that came through and were sold, each adding a tidy sum to her credit account, but it wasnt until the natural treasures started coming out that she really started paying attention again. The first item on the docket was certainly starting off strong, and sent murmurs through the crowd despite the muffling enchantments liberally lining the booths.

A Leaf of Eternity.

The natural treasure was one that could grant the digester an extra two thousand years of lifespan, and represented a chance for many of the Desperates to avoid Minkalla altogether by outright tripling their lifespan.

The bids eventually settled on a truly astronomical number, well beyond her total proceeds thus far. Her own natural treasures didnt sell for nearly as much when they came up, though the Deep Prismatic Agate was a clear forerunner in that respect. It single handedly managed to cover the cost of any two or even three of the natural treasures shed bought earlier.

Eventually, the growth items took the stage. There were a couple clearly from Minkalla, sitting at Tier 14 already, but most were imports from outside the system, as seen by their lower starting Tiers. They were ready for bonding to either rich delvers who just exited, or rich delvers who wanted to place a finger on the scales of fate, and choose at least one item they could take into the depths with them.

The first promising item was a chain mail shirt that increased the power of all elemental transformation skills- [Body], [Form], and [Spirit]- and while the price swiftly grew past what April was willing to pay, now she was on the hunt.

A growth shield that could be mentally controlled as though affected by an animation spell caught Aprils eye, and she put in a few eager bids before calming herself. Liz had used a shield towards the end of Minkalla, yes, but that was in large part due to her missing arm, and April didnt want to affect the girls fighting style in such a dramatic way as to introduce an entirely new tool to her arsenal. Fortunately, she was quickly outbid by a green-bearded dwarf and so didnt need to deal with Lunas displeasure at bringing back an ill-suited growth item.

She could have justified the item at the bargain bin price, but not anything above that.

A torch that could freeze fire spells cast through it to form the head of a mace caught her eye, as did an icicle-wand which drastically increased the control the caster had of a skill post-usage. A growth pendant which improved all bloodline powers sparked an incredibly fierce bidding war, until it was eventually won by a dragon five rows in front of April after he tripled the latest bid alongside a show of force.

Hed flared his presence for a brief moment, showing off his Tier 40 status as he raised his bid, blatantly breaking the rules of the auction. Despite Erik giving an extra-long opportunity for anyone to outbid the dragon, none took up the offer, and the dragon won his prize, much to the obvious displeasure of the crowd. April could practically feel the smug aura the dragon was exuding, even as a pair of Tier 42 guards showed up to escort him out. Hed received the item, but April couldnt help but wonder if hed still be smiling after he paid whatever fines were levied against him, and hed learned how long the ban from the Corporations would last.

Judging by his attitude, he might not even care.

That had led to some discontented muttering from the crowd as well, leaving a bit of a darkened mood across the auction hall. It also prompted a couple other high Tier 30s and low Tier 40s to try their luck as well, but they made the mistake of not also raising the bid by an incredible amount, and wound up being escorted out the moment the bid was raised again. In one notable instance, they didnt even wait for the bid to be re-raised, instead force-marching the loudly complaining Guild man out the door, ignoring his shouts about how they hadnt seen the last of Doctor Impossible (the second)!

That raised everyones mood a couple notches.

Then, she saw her prize. It was a staff, long and largely unadorned, made of some unidentified dark wood.It enabled the caster to control any of the four level one elements- Fire, Water, Earth, and Air- with any manipulation skill the caster had, even those of higher-level elements. It would be relatively easy to get a Talented crafter to affix a spearhead to it, and while the spearhead wouldnt be growth, the staffs effect would.

Even some kinesis skills would work if the original and resulting elements were similar enough. The example given was utilizing metal skills with earth affinity, but April already knew what it would be perfect for. It would allow Liz to control water or even air with all of her blood skills, utilizing her masterful kinesis abilities on a substantially more abundant element: something very important now that shed lost her glove and accompanying blood reservoir.

On top of that, it would empower Torch a truly incredible amount, giving Liz a substantial boost compared to using [Fire Manipulation] in her outer spirit. Granted, between the lack of the young phoenixs bloodline not properly applying to [Blood Manipulation], even if it was controlling fire, and the inherent inefficiency to the staff, it would only be more of a two to three times multiplier all told. But it was still an incredible boost to her versatility. Even if she didnt want it, and chose to delve exclusively into blood magic, Aster and even Matt could benefit from the incredible versatility the staff offered. It would transform an elemental specialist into an omnielemental specialist, and that was no mean feat, particularly as they began building their Intents.

Bidding was fierce, as she expected, but April had money to spare, as the mountain of loot her kids had brought out of Minkalla translated into pure credits. Even as the price rose, and rose, and rose, she matched and outbid every other contender. The Sect woman in multicolored robes, the red dragon in golden Clan armor, the stern-looking woman in Federation military garb, they all challenged her and lost.

It might have been the kids' money she was spending, but she felt invigorated by her victory.

Still, it took nearly everything she had left, with only enough for a Tier 20 skill and two Tier 8 skills with her spare change, to be exchanged on the Empire market for contribution points, but she had won.

Now, she just needed to return to Luna and see if she had passed this test.