“The final item to be sold today is knowledge of an easily generated resource that can double the recovery rate of a mortal’s mana core after a cleansing session, allowing Colour mages to advance in half the usual time,” the Attendant said.
Percy had expected the presenter to at least hint at the fact that the cyan powder could be brewed into elixirs for even better results – to hike up the price of the lot further – but the divine merchant had surprisingly opted to stick to the details that Percy had volunteered.
Despite the deity’s restraint, the words lingered within the vast hall, undoubtedly eliciting shocked reactions from the audience. Percy wasn’t privy to most of them, since they had occurred behind opaque panels. He was only able to study Tickleglobben’s expression, as the gnome’s room was the only one still visible to everyone.
The furious scowl on the meerkat’s face didn’t disappoint.
Strangely enough, Tickleglobben appeared even angrier at the mere thought of somebody selling the secret of faster core-cleansing than he had been about losing the bidding war on his own heritage. Percy had been told by multiple sources that greater springs actively suppressed weaker worlds, but he was apparently still underestimating how strongly the cosmic overlords felt about this matter.
‘Pathetic. Why don’t you bastards focus on making your own people stronger, rather than keeping everyone else down?’
The Attendant, on the other hand, looked quite pleased with the response. “I trust that I do not need to point out the kind of impact that such a purchase can have on a developing world. Bidding starts at two million and forty thousand tokens.”
The opening price was already daunting, but it rose to a whopping eight million in no time, showing no signs of slowing down. Even Tickleglobben – who had previously given up on the Focus when its price had reached a mere seven hundred thousand – didn’t hesitate to enter a bid for ten million, only to be instantly outdone by somebody else.
Percy had suspected that everyone’s pockets ran far deeper than what they had previously revealed. After all, their funds were the accumulation of entire planets over countless years – even the richer lesser springs clearly possessed a lot more wealth than they’d been willing to spend.
Apparently, all concerns of frugality went out of the window in the face of this opportunity. Even draining their accounts dry was clearly a small price to pay for a chance to become greater springs.
“Should we leave while the auction is still ongoing?” one of the Violet Gallimians asked, drawing everyone’s attention. “Staying here until the end is starting to look dangerous.”
“Leaving before everyone else is even riskier,” Aje said, shaking her head. “If we get spotted on the way out, people will suspect that we have something to do with the sale. We’re currently protected solely by our anonymity, so our best bet is to stay put and leave with everyone else. If Percy’s decision leads to any negative consequences, I suspect that he will have to deal with them in the coming years – not right away.”
Percy frowned as he saw the bids cross the twelve million mark. He wanted to be happy that such a ridiculous sum was about to enter his pocket, yet he struggled to muster any excitement, fully aware that he had just kicked the cosmic equivalent of a hornet’s nest.
Tossing another glance at the items inside his seal, he tried to convince himself that he had made the right call.
He’d purchased the coordinates of as many as four interesting new planets, each brimming with unique opportunities. Outside of the primary benefits of each destination, half also happened to be greater springs, with one being the home of an extremely powerful faction, giving him a good shot at finding a new way to extend his lifespan.
Eventually, the secret of Crystallization got sold for fourteen and a half million tokens, far surpassing the profits of the previous listing both as a percentage and a raw number.
Percy had stopped paying attention to Tickleglobben’s bids at some point, so he wasn’t sure whether the gnome had won. Judging from the meerkat’s grimace, he hadn’t, making Percy wonder whether it was another zealous greater spring that had purchased the secret to keep it away from lesser springs, or whether it was a weaker world that had emerged victorious after emptying their account. Or maybe, it was Tickleglobben who had claimed the prize, after all, and the gnome’s dwindling balance was precisely the cause of his foul mood.
Either way, Percy’s nearly eradicated funds suddenly rose by an astronomical amount. After the Pavilion had taken their standard ten percent cut and recouped their advance, Percy made sure to also pay Aje back for her timely loan. He even went so far as to add a few thousand extra tokens as interest, to thank her. Only then did he examine the new number on his tablet, the eight-digit sum making him feel slightly better: ‘12,250,000 tokens.’
‘Hey, cheer up,’ Micky said. ‘Think of all the things we’ll be able to buy with this kind of money. I suppose that most of it is going toward karmic compasses, but that’s still a massive improvement over wandering around the universe blindly.’
Percy mentally nodded. His clones had failed to find a greater spring during the entire decade leading up to the void tournament. If it hadn’t been for the ticket that he and Kassorith had earned from Thess’kala, and Metatron’s assistance, he would have never stepped foot on Marador Prime.
Thanks to the Gallimians and the Sapphire Pavilion, he would now have a far more reliable way to learn the locations of such worlds, once a year. He and his fellow aspect just had to survive the aftermath of their actions.
Before leaving the space station with the Gallimians, Percy spent a few minutes and another ten thousand tokens purchasing common affinity-changing treasures directly from the Pavilion, requesting for them to be delivered to the private room, so as to avoid being seen in possession of such wealth.
He prioritized treasures with durations between thirty and forty-nine days, to ensure that they would last until he returned to Remior, yet without crossing the threshold that would incur a higher cost than necessary. Spreading the funds evenly between the five elements, he also reached out to his main body, asking him to inform the allied Houses that they would need to send their eligible mages to the Fungal Spire within the coming weeks.
With this many treasures, Percy could ensure that every allied noble and all the Guild’s combatants would upgrade their common affinities to composite elements of their choosing. In theory, Percy had more than enough money to provide treasures to everyone on Remior, but he decided to hold onto the rest of his tokens for now. His priority was growing his own power, and it wasn’t like he could negotiate with every House on the planet in the span of a single month anyway.
With nothing left to do at the Pavilion, Percy and the other mortals entered Aje’s internal world as the goddess finally set course for Gallimus.
Much like Lanthaniel and the long-necked deity that had rescued Tiberius from the vacuum of space, the Gallimian goddess appeared to have ascended with a composite affinity and to have reached the peak of the Self-Discovery stage. Her internal world was about three kilometres across, however, making it a little larger than the other deities he had met at that level. Aje’s world was a frozen wasteland that made Percy and Micky feel right at home.
‘I guess that their strength is the bare minimum that a god needs to travel through the cosmos safely – without worrying about space bandits,’ Percy concluded. Those three deities had all travelled alone, seemingly unconcerned about their survival.
Summoning a tall pile of green mushrooms by his host’s feet, he instructed Tiberius on how to awaken his new core and begin clearing his channels. He saw no reason to be stingy with the Violet after everything that the poor guy had been through.
Percy would have volunteered the information and the ingredients sooner, but he’d worried that activating the magical organ would have been risky in the presence of hundreds of deities.
Judging by the arguably sloppy measures that the Gallimians had taken to successfully conceal Duwa’s second core, Tiberius would have probably been fine, but Percy hadn’t had a reason to gamble. That said, he hoped that his host wouldn’t awaken an air affinity, otherwise they would both regret their decision to feed him a piece of the dandelion.
With the Violet busy working on his new affinity and Percy having nothing else to do, he decided to ask Aje about a few things that had been bugging him. The Gallimian goddess seemed approachable enough, and they did have a long journey ahead of them.
“Hey, Aje… how is a god’s power measured anyway? I know that it’s supposed to scale with the number of concepts that they have comprehended, but I don’t fully understand the impact that they have, nor how they relate to the size of one’s internal world.”