Freddy had known that the privileges of having a special-ranked badge would be awesome, but even then, he had vastly underestimated what those badges meant.
In the empire, and perhaps more importantly, before anyone from a government institution… he was practically nobility.
He had taken the advice and called the number, just as an experiment. One thing led to another, and he found himself coming home to five well-dressed salespeople patiently waiting for him right outside his apartment, their heads down.
“Uhhh… Come in, I guess.” He awkwardly opened the door and ushered the overly polite gaggle inside, feeling more than a bit awkward at how they waited on him.
“We are here to offer our services.” A woman stepped forth, her tone even, a mild smile on her lips.
“Right. Yes, I do need those. Uh…” His mind froze as he struggled to piece together what exactly he wanted first. “Let’s start with some cursed items. Do you have like a—”
Before he could even finish asking, one of the aides stepped forward and handed him a tablet.
Freddy accepted it. “Thanks.”
The tablet he was handed was a menu. A pretty damn extensive one, giving him direct access to right about everything the ATA sold. Some of the sections were restricted and only accessible to those with badges of a certain rank. As far as Freddy knew, he had access to everything. Sweet…
The first thing he took a look at was the category with artifacts—or, well, cursed items. Without hesitation, he went straight for the S list. “Oh.”
He had expected the items to be expensive here, but he hadn’t thought the prices would start at 10 billion dollars. Sighing as he mentally adjusted his budget, he got to scrolling. And frankly? He was kind of disappointed.
It wasn’t that the items there were bad—that wasn’t the case at all.
There were a couple of problems, however.
For starters, most of the listings were for sets. Not to say that sets were bad. Having three cursed items equipped was a big advantage, and the set bonuses were nothing to scoff at. But most of the good stuff was way outside of his budget, and perhaps more importantly—
“Quick question; where are all the uniques? Are they on a separate list?”
The saleswoman showed no reaction, simply bowing her head slightly as she said, “Unique artifacts of the S list standard are usually sold through auctions, Sir. If you’re interested, you can take a look at our A and B lists. Although they are generally of lower quality, perhaps you might find something suitable to your needs.”
“Huh. Okay.” Freddy held in his sigh of frustration, taking a look at the sets instead.
Perhaps Freddy was a bit spoiled. The sets in question weren’t bad at all, but they were just… a bit plain for his tastes.
The overwhelming majority of the sets within his budget offered elementary boosts. Ability power, essence discounts, or specific bonuses to some kind of physical characteristic. The numbers were mild, rarely crossing 10%, with none of the items offering more than a single effect.
The set bonuses were the most appealing thing about them. They were quite varied, ranging from temporary boosts, to additional effects like worsening bleeding or weakening armor or paralyzing the target, to more exotic stuff, like one set that doubled projectiles conjured by an ability if the ability in question cost less than 5% essence.
There were a number of sets there that would give Freddy a decent boost to his power, but they were just kind of underwhelming.
This was only for stuff inside his budget.
For stuff outside of it?
Sheesh.
Even with no uniques involved, some of these set effects nearly made Freddy’s eyes bug out of his skull. There was one set that went for just a bit shy of a 100 billion dollars, and its effect allowed the user to designate one of their abilities as their “primary” ability, which lowered its essence cost by 35% and increased its power by 19%.
If that wasn’t insane enough, there was a 130-billion dollar metal-affinity set that gave a freakin’ 97% discount to raw essence manipulation of metal objects weighing less than 300 grams. This would easily allow someone to fly, not to mention the value in developing new abilities, and this was completely ignoring the pretty solid effects the individual items offered.
There was something of a long-standing debate whether going with two decent unique items was better than using a set. It certainly depended on what the actual items in question could do.
Obviously, the best choice was a set of unique items, but that wasn’t something one would find lying around on the floor somewhere.
After around an hour of gaping at the power of money, Freddy remembered something.
Back at the Century of Solitude, he had been offered a choice between three things. One of these things was a “Superior Gem of Binding.” It was an item that allowed the user to fuse any four items into a set. While Freddy wasn’t going to say he was regretting his choice, especially given that his choice was only supposed to pay off far into the future, he couldn’t help but wince at the missed opportunity.
How much would a set of four solid unique items sell for?
Given the prices he was seeing? Probably for more than money could buy.
Hold on… If that was a Superior Gem of Binding…?
Feeling curious, Freddy looked up “Gem of Binding” in the search function. To his surprise, he actually got a result.
INFERIOR GEM OF BINDING ($6,240,200,000)
“Inferior?” He read through the description with a scowl, and got a better idea of what was happening here. This was apparently a product sold by a company, meaning it was artificial and not a reward for some kind of dungeon. It was capable of fusing three items into a set, but…
There were many limitations. None of the items could be unique, or offer effects higher than 10%, or have more than one effect. The items in question also had to be related to sister concepts, and most importantly, the fusion wasn’t as simple as bashing a few things together—it was a process that required a highly experienced artificer, and even then, it only had a 90% chance of success at best.
It was increasingly obvious that the vast majority of the cheaper sets on the S list were made by using this item. “Fascinating…” Turning to the salespeople, who he suddenly remembered were still patiently waiting for him to finish browsing, he swallowed a wince and asked, “I have a question. These auctions… Are Gems of Binding ever sold there?”
The woman appeared a bit taken aback by that. “There have been cases where they’ve appeared, but it's rare, and they sell for vast sums every time they do.”
Freddy sighed. “Figures.” He promptly left the S list and went down to the A list, heeding the woman’s prior advice. Perhaps there were some suitable uniques he could find.
The price of the items on the A list ranged from 5 to 10 billion. On the upper end, there were some shitty sets, but other than that, there were solid singular items up for sale here. And, he had been told, there were uniques, too. They mostly sucked.
It came down to one of three things—either the item itself was of terrible quality, meaning it would need to be heavily maintained, the effect was terrible, or the growth requirement was ridiculous.
Despite all this, it didn’t take him long to find an item he was interested in.
There was a unique sledgehammer being sold at just shy of 9 billion dollars. It even had two effects. The first… improved the user’s hearing. Freddy had no clue how a sledgehammer ended up with such a random effect, but at least there was another. The second effect allowed the user to imbue the item with essence, which would make the sledgehammer release said essence in a chaotic outburst upon striking a target.
The weapon had three major issues, according to the description.
One, the sledgehammer itself was just kind of ass. It was too heavy, the shaft was too long, and the head was misshapen. Second, the effects were mediocre. Hearing had limited utility, and the second effect was highly inefficient, costing a lot of essence while being pretty underwhelming. And third, the growth requirement was just simply annoying.
The sledgehammer grew in power the more essence was channeled through it. This seemed like an easy way to grow a unique item, but it only worked in combat, the effect itself was pretty much a total waste of essence, and the returns diminished quite quickly.
Freddy bought the item without hesitation.
None of the problems were really a problem for him. The essence burst effect was kind of shitty, but he had nothing else to use his essence on anyway.
He continued scrolling down on his search for a second unique. While the first one came by rather quickly, he was struggling to find a second item. There were other unique weapons he was interested in, but they were generally worse than the hammer, and he only needed one such weapon.
After a long while of scrolling through the massive list, he reached the bottom. Even then, he found nothing. After a bit of hesitation, he went down to the B list, which was for items priced between 1 and 5 billion.
There were so many items there that he was forced to filter his search. He limited it to only uniques, and only ones with some kind of physical effect, given he couldn’t use his abilities. After a few minutes of scrolling, he found an item that made him perk up. A predatory smile spread across his lips. “That’s more like it…”
For 1.7 billion dollars, he could buy a unique ring.
The effect? +2% overall physical boost.
The growth requirement?
Physical improvement of the user.
Overall physical boost was an insanely good effect. Because it targeted every aspect of his physical capability, be it his speed, strength, durability, endurance, or perception. It was practically five different effects packed into one.
Which begged the question: why was the item so cheap?
It was quite simple, really. According to the description, this ring had been passed between over thirty different users. Thirty people had held it, and yet, the effect had stagnated at only 2%. Was every previous user lazy? That was obviously not the case.
Rather, this item had one massive problem.
It was important to keep the principle unique items operated on in mind. They were “open” to taking in more aura. Events that generated aura fed the items, fueling their growth. But while certain kinds of events created a massive amount of external aura, others… didn’t.
Physical improvement did create a lot of aura, but a massive portion of it was bound to the user’s body, acting as the building block of improvement in question. Which left the ring with little to feed on.
In order to grow this item, one had to do something truly insane. The user had to make such a monumental leap in physical capability that they created an event in the world around them.
And if there was anyone who was going to do this, it was going to be Freddy.
Satisfied with his purchases, he turned to the aides waiting on him. It was awfully awkward to just have them standing there in silence, patiently waiting for him to make up his mind. He wondered why there were five of them in the first place. Was it just a show of power? A luxury to stroke the ego of people like Freddy?
Because he had to admit, his ego was feeling pretty stroked right now.
“I believe I’m done.” He said as he offered the tablet back.
“Anything else we can help you with?” a man offered.
Freddy thought about it for a moment. “Now that you ask…” He listed off a number of things he had been planning to buy, in hopes of getting some advice for where to find them. This included a set of instruments he wanted to try learning, collections of books, and some arts and crafts supplies.
Rather than simply advise him, the aides quickly compiled a short shopping list with every single thing he needed, handling everything from top to bottom, even finding tutors for the different hobbies he wanted to try learning. They were swift and coordinated, so much so that Freddy got a bit carried away. For about another hour, they made suggestions for things he could buy, and for his part, he spread his wallet wide open and flipped it upside down.
These people were incredible at selling things. Just from the barest hint of interest on Freddy’s side, they quickly locked in on a huge number of things he might be interested in. At first, they tested the waters with relatively cheap, simple stuff, like fashion collections, nicer furniture, delving supplies, and so on.
Slowly, they moved over to bigger things, where they quickly locked in on his obvious fascination with etherology.
They had sold him the newest multi-screen BC system with a direct link to all the arena fights, a prototype quasi-computer thing he was far too excited about, several high-end cars and motorcycles, which he quickly realized he had nowhere to keep, but not to worry, they would sell him a large garage right below the very building he lived in!
“Okay!” He shouted and clapped once he realized he was about to spend over 2 billion extra dollars on a bunch of nonsense he hadn’t even been planning to buy. Getting up in a hurry, he gestured to the door. “I believe that is enough for today.” He was eager to get them out of his apartment. If they stayed any longer, he feared they would milk him for everything he was worth.
For their part, they quickly took the hint. “It was a pleasure doing business with you. Mr. Stern. We will deliver everything to you as quickly as possible.” The woman said, her pleased smile evident, as she curtsied and left, her gaggle of helpers following after her like baby ducks.
He released a breath he didn’t realize he was holding when they left. Then he chuckled and sat down on the couch, where he leaned back to rest his eyes a bit.
“Ah, shit.” When he opened his eyes, the clock on the wall had moved about 8 hours forward. Or maybe 20. Or 32. The fact he couldn’t tell was pretty alarming. “Right… I have to keep myself occupied.” He slapped his cheeks, and with all the willpower he could gather, he moved over to the kitchen table, where he took out a pen and paper and got to writing.
He planned out a schedule, looking to fill out his time as much as possible. He set aside a good deal of his daily schedule for delving. The rest was split up between all sorts of activities. He would try many new things, and hopefully, find some meaning in them.
The haze he was constantly fighting back crept in on him, clouding his vision and making him hesitate. It took a lot of effort to push himself. Looking at the list before him, he couldn’t help but feel like this was gonna be a major pain in the ass. He had been taking things pretty far lately, and it was starting to catch up to him. Or at least, that was how it felt.
The soul therapist had explained that that feeling of fatigue was illusory. He wasn’t going to break down and collapse. In fact, it was imperative that he continue to fight back if he wanted to stand any chance of putting his soul back together.
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself up to his feet.
“Right… This is technically a vacation, isn’t it?”
He would be damned if he didn’t enjoy it to the fullest.