The Editor Is An Extra-Chapter 54: Divination
It didn’t take long before Khloe had the treasure house’s artisans appraising the stand.
"This is... where even did you get this kid?" One of the artisans, a short old man turned his spectacles to me.
"I don’t believe I’m obliged to tell you that now am I?" I scoffed.
"Figures." He said, moving his magnifying artifact along the stand’s lines. "This shit is over ten thousand years old, you can imagine why I’m curious."
"I know that." I lied. Though it’s age shocked me, all I cared about was how much it could net me. The deadlands had existed longer than any being currently alive could say, so it would do well to say that the castle was extremely ancient, and so were the things inside it. Regretfully, I was stopped by the parameters of my spatial storage.
"What’s it’s price range?" Khloe asked.
"I’d say around a hundred and thirty thousand to two hundred thousand, depending on the audience." The other artisan replied.
"Gold knotts?" Khloe asked slacked jawed. Guess she still had a long way to go before she became the infamous Spider.
Though I wasn’t one to judge. My eyes underneath my mask widened. ’I am rich again.’ I thought almost in tears.
"What did you think? bronze knotts?" the short old man scoffed.
Khloe sent them away after that, before turning to me.
"There are two ways we can do this. This auction house holds an auction every day, so if you’re in a hurry, I could set it up for today." She explained.
"But I wouldn’t do that if I were you. There is a big auction every Thursday, your item would most certainly fetch the highest price there."
"Thursday huh?" I pretended to reason. "I can wait." I nodded.
"Great. But I must remind you, the House’s commission is five percent."
’What is five percent of 200,000?’ I thought. ’That’ll be 10,000.’ God, I hadn’t even held a percent of that since my arrival into this world. But still, "I have no objections." I nodded. Why worry about 10,000, when I was going to have 190,000 or even more, depending on how high the price goes.
"What should I call you young sir?" Khloe tilted her head with a smile.
"Mark," I answered without even blinking. You can call me Mark."
"Okay Mr Mark...." she began, but I interjected.
"Just Mark would be fine." It would do well to start to crush the walls between yourself and someone you want to willingly work for you in the near future.
"Okay then Mark." Khloe said almost amused as she produced a black card on which a gold treasure chest was etched.
"You will be entitled to a private show room on the auction day. This will be your key to that."
I collected the card, and pocketed it in my spatial storage, before standing up. After that, we finalized the deal. I got the time of the auction, and other relative info.
Since the auction wasn’t going to happen until the next three days, I took the liberty to stick around in the black market for that duration, until the auction was over. After that, I would just exchange with another reflection.
With that, I left the Treasure Auction House, and decided to checkout/explore the rest of the black market.
The deeper I went, the more the scenery changed.
From small time vendors to merchants selling their goods, to even a gladiator arena. Now I would have loved to shop a little, maybe get some artifact, but I had no money no more.
The last of my coins was what I was going to use to secure an abode for the next three days. Sure, as a reflection I didn’t need to sleep, but I couldn’t exactly just keep wandering around for three whole days.
I kept walking past the stalls, until I began to reach the decrepit parts of the underground market, where shaggy and abandoned stores lay.
"Hey there." A voice almost like a whisper broke me out of my thoughts.
My head snapped towards the voice, and there I saw it. A middle aged woman with a few strands of grey hair sat in one decrepit stall.
’How did I not notice her?’ I thought baffled.
"Want to learn about your future dear?" She asked in with a smile, and in a smooth, calculating voice.
I looked at her once more.
’Probably a scammer.’ I thought. I would have thought that maybe she had an ability that let her predict the future, or she had some sort of divination sorcery, if not for the fact that I couldn’t sense a silver of aether from her. In short, she was a mundane human.
"No thank you ma’am." I smiled politely. Even if she was a scammer, I couldn’t spare a spare a single Knott at the moment. It was better to just go on my own way.
The woman chuckled, her eyes never leaving me.
"Don’t be so quick to refuse young man." she said drawing out a couple of playing cards. "Besides, did I forget to mention it was free?"
"Well you should have led with that." I trudged over. I had more than enough time with nothing to do. And since it was free, I didn’t mind entertaining the woman.
I sat down on the stool, with the table between us. "Humor me." I said.
The woman chuckled, laying the playing cards she had drawn earlier, on the table with their backs facing up.
"Pick any three of your liking." She said. I casually selected the first three that caught my eye.
She overturned the first one. I saw rot eating at a pocket watch.
"This is the moss in the clock. It signifies running out of time.
Overturned the second card, showing a... jar?
"This is the jar that hums. It signifies something is being kept away." And lastly overturned the third card, showing a stair that broke off towards the end.
"And this is the unnamed stair, it signifies uncertain future."
Normally I would have thought; ’what future isn’t uncertain?’ But then I remembered the one I was hoping to change.
Finally she picked the three cards and held them together with eyes closed.
Then she spoke.
"I see blood."
’Yeah, real original.’ I rolled my eyes.
"I see destruction." You know, maybe this woman was taking this a little too seriously.
"Not enough time." she continued.
"A path of corpses." Her voice turned into almost a whisper.
"And a part sealed away."
"Watching your every move."
She opened her eyes.
"Well done." I resisted the urge to clap. It was very good actually. Would make a good script.
"You don’t believe it." She shook her head with a ghost of a smile. I said nothing. What else would I say?
"Go on now dear. We shall cross paths again if fate wills it so." she said.
"Uhh... Yes." I awkwardly stood up.
I kept walking back in the direction of the vibrant area, but kept feeling a great unease.
For some reason, her words kept resounding in my ears even though weren’t anything special, just usual cryptic nonsense.
’It was my fault for deciding to entertain a creepy old lady.’ I thought as I walked away.
Yet why does something about them feel strange?
’Maybe I should ask her to explain what they meant.’ I mused. After a few moments of debating with myself, I turned back and began walking towards her stall.
But when I reached there, there was no table, cards, woman, or even the stall itself. It looked like nothing was ever there. But how was that possible? she was just here not even a minute ago.
’I must be overthinking things.’ I consoled myself. ’Yeah, I must I’ve forgotten where the stall was.’ I tried to reason while fully knowing at the back of my mind that it was the place.
With goosebumps all over my body, I turned and head away from the place.
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Meanwhile back at the institute, I came out of the gravity room completely drenched in sweat, my joints aching with each movement, and my mind still feeling over what my reflection had just witnessed in the black market.
’There’s no use thinking about it.’ I shelved the thought away.
All the reflections I had left to keep training here had already faded away. It was a given, the aether allotted to each reflection wasn’t nearly enough to keep spamming my techniques like crazy.
With this type of training everyday, I would definitely increase my mastery in both techniques before next week.
Before, I had said that Alistair, Anastasia, and Rose were the only ones that I had no chance against. But now, with my breakthrough, I had decided to scratch Rose off the list. Even though I hadn’t tested it yet, with my reflection operating at around 360 percent of my stats, Rose’s flames were not touching me.
I walked out the training room with my knee joints aching as fuck. And as low on aether as I was, I would have to walk the long way to the dorm, just because I kinda forgot to leave a reflection in the dorms.
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THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT EVERYONE. YOUR GIFT IS THE MOTIVATION TO MY CREATION.
