Much like Aje had said, most of the items sold in the auction were karmic compasses pointing at various unlucky barren worlds and lesser springs. However, the goddess had still underestimated the percentage of such sales, since the auctioned karmic compasses were closer to eighty percent of the lots. The opening and closing bids rose steadily, quickly crossing into thousands of tokens about halfway through the event.
Percy even noticed the item that the long-necked humanoids had told him about – a karmic compass leading to Drukalan, where people from other races would be allowed to give birth for a high chance of obtaining a bloodline. This wasn’t even close to the most valuable item in today’s auction, so Percy wasn’t sure why the yellow-furred people had paid so much attention to it. Perhaps, for all of their world’s development, they still hadn’t produced a bloodline Decree of their own, making this opportunity quite important for them. And they weren’t the only ones.
The bidding war for this particular compass – a blue one with a yellow needle this time – was easily the most competitive in the auction so far. Percy wasn’t sure what percentage of the factions present were both wealthy enough to afford it and interested enough in bloodlines to want it, since the Pavilion kept the identities and even the number of potential buyers hidden.
Still, the few groups that met the requirements clearly stopped at nothing to win. The auction had started at a thousand tokens, with the item eventually being sold for four point two thousand – which was the largest profit margin yet.
Percy had considered buying a few of the cheaper compasses himself.
It wasn’t like he was interested in the resources of those worlds, since he didn’t even place an alternative source of stable beast mana in his eyes nowadays. He knew that he could eventually cover Remior’s cleansing needs simply by optimizing the output of the hive and the Alchemists’ Guild. Not that he would say no to a backup source of a nectar-adjacent ingredient, but he would surely find something worth importing through his travels sooner or later, without paying a single token.
However, he might be able to save the lives of countless people who were about to get invaded by cruel factions, and a few thousand tokens would hardly put a dent in his balance.
‘What’s even the point, though?’ he couldn’t help but ask himself.
There were hundreds of karmic compasses being sold in just today’s auction, and this was merely one of hundreds of branches of the Sapphire Pavilion – not to mention the countless unlucky worlds that were discovered and conquered every day without their location ever changing hands. Percy would never save them all. Not as he was. If he wanted to change things, his best bet would be to invest everything in his own growth. His efforts had slowly but surely given him a voice on Remior. Maybe they could give him a voice in the wider cosmos one day.
Another thing he noticed was that every karmic compass looked different from the rest. They all seemed to come in a standard shape and size, but the colours of the crystalline orbs and the metallic needles housed within them varied greatly.
Percy wasn’t sure whether the gods who had created the objects had done that on purpose, treating each unique combination of colours like a label to tell the compasses apart, or whether they didn’t have any control over the manifested colours in the first place. Perhaps, each karmic thread that got grafted onto an orb possessed its own set of hues.
A small part of him wondered what colours a karmic compass pointing toward Remior would acquire, though a much larger part hoped that nobody would ever craft such a terrifying object.
It wasn’t until about two-thirds into the auction that Percy finally found something that he wanted.
“The next item is a plaque enchanted to grant anyone a mindset. The mindset is a simple one that occupies a little over half of a person’s mental capacity and enhances their cognitive ability. The greatest advantage of the plaque is that it can be used repeatedly. Better still, the object recharges and maintains itself with ambient mana, so its owner will never have to seek out a mind mage, though they will have to wait a few days between uses. Bidding starts at twelve hundred tokens.”
Percy wasted no time before entering his first bid. Others didn’t either, causing the opening price to quickly double, which forced Percy to enter a second one. Competition slowed down after that, though he still had to pay just over three thousand tokens for the plaque.
‘It’s worth it,’ he thought as a small octagonal pillar like the one on the stage rose from a hole on the floor of the private room, delivering his prize.
This mindset didn’t sound anything like the specialized and personalized one that he wanted to eventually commission from an expert. It wouldn’t even fill up his entire capacity, and the creator of the plaque had clearly sacrificed a lot of power and efficiency to design a mindset that could be passed to multiple people so easily. Even a proper mindset wouldn’t necessarily be worth more than a good mutation, which Percy had already estimated to be worth no more than a few dozen tokens.
That said, it would serve as an acceptable placeholder for a few years, until Percy found the right person for the job. Unlike spectral traits, mutations or bloodlines, Nephthys had explained that mindsets could be removed and replaced fairly easily, so there was no sense in letting his mental capacity continue to be wasted until he found something better.
The fact that he would be able to grant the mindset to an unlimited number of allies was a welcome bonus, as well as the only explanation for its ridiculous price tag. Percy didn’t doubt that Phoebe could give much better mindsets to a single individual, but the titaness was clearly incapable of designing an object that would mass-produce them, otherwise there would have certainly been multiple items like this plaque circulating all over Remior. Phoebe’s goal was to strengthen their world as much as possible, after all.
‘Maybe she’ll be able to draw inspiration from it and the Vault’s magiscript to create something more potent,’ Micky speculated, making Percy feel even better about his purchase.
Upon receiving the plaque, he allowed Tiberius to activate it to acquire the mindset. Percy had hoped that he would obtain it too, since that was what had happened on Robari, when Ludwick’s projection had granted both him and Marnok a different mindset.
Unfortunately, unlike the canister of Clear mana that Saint Ludwick had prepared, the plaque didn’t seem to have enough ambient mana stored for multiple people. Percy’s ability to tap into his host’s mind was also rather limited, the object would take a few days to recharge, and he was more than happy to pass the mindset to the Gallimians too if they wanted it, so he would probably have to wait until he reunited with his main body to personally experience the benefits of his new toy.
‘It’s good,’ the Violet assured him. ‘It’s not that potent, but the improvement is noticeable.’
‘Do you not have any demigods with a mind affinity on Rom to give your Green-borns something better?’ Percy asked.
‘We do, but mindset design is a very demanding field. The most talented experts have long wait queues and typically prioritize providing their services to our Whites and demigods. I’d have to wait centuries to get my turn,’ Tiberius explained.
Percy nodded. As far as he could tell, this was a field that didn’t even exist on Remior. Phoebe was clearly aware of its existence, but they probably didn’t have nearly enough powerful mages with the mind affinity to delve into it. Perhaps, the titaness personally granted a couple of powerful mindsets to the Order’s gods and demigods and left it at that.
‘Let’s add that to the long list of things that we need to change if we don’t want our planet to just be a pretty flower that any random passerby can pluck at their leisure,’ he told himself and his fellow aspect.
Returning his attention to the ongoing auction, Percy noticed that the Attendant was back to selling karmic compasses, though there was something different about the more expensive ones.
“Next, we have an exclusive compass pointing to another barren world with a stable source of beast mana. Bidding starts at two thousand tokens.”
Percy turned to the Gallimian goddess with a frown. “It’s twenty times more expensive than the other one. Is that because it’s ‘exclusive’?”
Aje nodded. “‘Exclusive’ means that the seller hasn’t shared the location of the planet with any other faction, vouches never to do so in the future, and is confident that no other faction has discovered the location independently in the past.”
Percy raised an eyebrow. He could see how this seemingly minor distinction could increase the value of a karmic compass by dozens of times – it was simply more convenient for the buyer to own exclusive access to the resource, instead of having to share it with other worlds.
At the same time, he could see why some sellers would rather go for a non-exclusive listing. In many cases, they might not even have a choice, since the location of the planet might have already leaked to a third party. Even when that wasn’t an issue, the seller could potentially make a lot of money by auctioning the location off repeatedly, though the value of the item would probably continue to decline with every sale.
Percy could also understand why buyers might be willing to settle for a non-exclusive compass. Some resources – such as the opportunity to send a few pregnant women to give birth on Drukalan – would not be depleted by repeated usage. There might even be cases when a powerful greater spring would purchase a non-exclusive compass with the confidence that they were strong enough to violently drive their competitors away from the planet.
Either way, Percy was relieved that he hadn’t foolishly purchased the compasses earlier in an attempt to protect the natives of those worlds. Those listings hadn’t been exclusive, so he would have simply thrown his tokens away.
“What if the seller lies?” he asked the Gallimian goddess. “Don’t tell me that the Pavilion will send somebody to every single planet to check.”
“A few of the weaker factions who are desperate for tokens might try that,” Aje admitted. “I highly recommend that you remain sceptical of every listing claimed to be ‘exclusive’. However, most of them should be legitimate. The strongest factions know better than to risk getting banned by the Pavilion forever for some short-term profit.”
Keeping the deity’s advice in mind, Percy paid closer attention to the subsequent listings, eventually even finding a few exclusive karmic compasses that interested him – and not just out of a misguided sense of pity toward the unfortunate residents of those planets.