Chapter 57 |
“Can’t I really participate?”
Baruk’s furry, thick fingers tightly pinched that exquisitely made invitation letter with its magnificent patterns, tears streaming from the corners of his mouth as he looked pitifully at Mick, who was leisurely sipping tea.
“No!”
Mick refused without the slightest courtesy. He did not even raise his eyelids, only lightly blowing on the curling hot steam in his cup.
“But first place gets 1000 magic crystals and a full set of enchanted equipment!”
Baruk still refused to give up.
“Even if you went, you still wouldn’t get it. Not to mention your injuries have only just healed, judging by strength alone, there’s absolutely no way you’d even make the top five! Let alone first place.”
“How is that possible!”
Baruk did not believe that in Grandmaster-level combat, he could not even make the top five!
“For those Grandmasters who lack resources and long to break through, how is this not also a rare opportunity that’s hard to come by?!”
“I investigated the duel records from the previous few years. Every time the battle for the top three happened, several Intent powerhouses had to stand guard to ensure the arena wouldn’t be smashed apart. The intensity of those fights was already infinitely close to the destructive force of Intent powerhouses!”
Mick picked up his teacup again and slowly took a sip of the top-grade tea leaves Mills had gifted him, narrowing his eyes at Baruk. “Are you sure you have that kind of strength?”
“If you think you do, I’ll contact President Mills right now and submit your name.”
Baruk’s mouth opened so wide that it was already having trouble closing.
What kind of monsters were those? They could already compare to Intent powerhouses?
Seeing that Baruk had been stunned into silence, Mick nodded in satisfaction. Although he had exaggerated the strength of the previous years’ decisive battles somewhat, he really was afraid something would happen to this fellow whose injuries had only just healed. The upcoming auction was the real top priority!
Before Baruk could react, he changed the subject first:
“There are a lot more powerful people coming to attend this auction than in previous years. I suspect many of them are probably here because they’re interested in that mysterious Legendary creature. It’s even possible that there are Transcendent-level powerhouses among them.”
“So what if they’re interested?” Baruk recovered himself and rubbed his jaw, which felt somewhat uncomfortable from having opened his mouth too wide.
“That’s a terrifying existence that has grasped the domain of space! Even if a Legendary personally came, they probably still wouldn’t be able to keep the other party here, right?”
“Idiot! Who said they had to keep the other party here? An existence like that is itself a powerful force. If a relationship could be established with it, that would be worth more than any auction item!”
“Putting everything else aside, even if one could buy some spatial-attribute materials from this one, that would already be a huge profit!”
“Oh right, how did I forget that!” Baruk smacked his forehead.
Aside from their powerful innate gifts, Legendary creatures were themselves also an enormous source of contamination, or one could say, a source of blessing. Items that remained in contact with them for long periods would all be imbued with their unique power attributes.
This situation was most common among dragons. They did not just influence ordinary material substances—even living beings would be affected. There were countless examples of weak creatures breaking through the shackles of their own bloodlines under the influence of a dragon’s draconic bloodline.
“But what does any of that have to do with us?”
Mick set down his teacup and said meaningfully:
“Don’t tell me you don’t want to establish a relationship with an existence like that?”
Baruk shook his head frantically and even let out a string of rejecting snorts.
“I don’t!”
Now it was Mick’s turn to be surprised. He had not expected Baruk to react like this.
“Why?”
“Too dangerous!”
“Huh?”
Mick looked at Baruk, his face full of incomprehension.
“I can’t really explain it either. I just feel that if we get involved with an existence like that, there’s a good chance we’ll fall into huge trouble.”
Baruk scratched the beard on his chin and continued:
“At the very least, I don’t want to right now, and it’s not something we could do anyway. With the strength and foundation of our tribe, trying to attach ourselves to an existence like that feels like a disaster rather than a blessing!”
Mick frowned. This really was a problem he had not considered.
After all, he had only wanted to catch a ride along the way and see whether it was possible to establish a trading relationship with it. If it was only that, then there shouldn’t be any danger, right?
“If it’s only trading, you still think it won’t work?”
“Trading for spatial materials?” Baruk’s eyes widened.
“Even if you gave that stuff to me, I wouldn’t be able to use it, and I’d have to stay on edge every day, terrified the news would leak out and someone would sneak to my door in the middle of the night to rob me! Besides, what could we even use to trade for it? Even if we sold the entire tribe, it still might not be enough, right?”
“That makes some sense…”
After hearing Baruk’s answer, Mick felt he really did need to rethink the problems involved. This old bear always had ideas that made people’s eyes light up. Perhaps they really did need to be more cautious.
He truly wanted spatial-attribute materials. The rarity of that kind of material was simply far too high. Their tribe had been passed down for thousands of years, yet they still had only a few spatial-type items.
***
Dean followed O’Brien toward a mountainous area in the eastern part of the city.
As they kept drawing closer, the surrounding patrol posts also became more numerous. Other than professionals, basically no one else could be seen on the road.
After passing through the last few districts built from giant piled stones, like military fortresses,
a giant stone gate over ten meters high, built into an enormous cliff face and radiating a solemn and heavy aura, appeared before their eyes.
Passing through the stone gate, they found a broad sloping tunnel wide enough for several carriages to travel side by side, winding and extending all the way downward.
To Dean’s surprise, the cave did not become narrow as they went deeper. Instead, it became broader and more magnificent.
Countless strange plants giving off soft glimmers clung to the cave walls, like a beautiful and dreamlike painting, illuminating the underground space with a bright and gentle light like dawn, not dazzling in the slightest.
The faint grassy scent released by the plants made Dean, who had spent the whole day breathing all kinds of strange smells, feel as if every pore in his body had opened up. It was indescribably comfortable.
After walking for nearly half a shichen, Dean had no idea how deep underground they had gone when he finally saw an even larger and more majestic stone gate standing ahead.
The moment they crossed that gate, the scene before them made Dean’s breathing stop!
An enormous underground city, miraculous and beyond the power of words to describe, appeared right before his eyes!
Countless incomparably thick stone bridges crisscrossed like a spiderweb, connecting platforms, buildings, and caverns carved into the vast cave walls all around.
And between these stone bridges floated countless giant glowing plants the size of houses, shaped like lanterns, like enormous stars illuminating this bottomless underground city.
“Th-this… this… this…” Dean was so shocked that he could not even speak a complete phrase.
Even with O’Brien’s broad experience and knowledge, when he had first come to this underground city, he too had been amazed by it.
This was also the first time he had ever seen underground architecture on such a scale.
“T-Teacher… h-how… deep… is this place…?”
Dean discovered that he was somewhat afraid of heights. Just one glance beneath the stone bridge made his legs go weak and a little hard to control.
“I don’t know. I’ve never gone down there.”
O’Brien answered honestly. Even with his perception, he could not detect in the slightest just how deep this underground hollow really was.
“You shouldn’t be curious either, much less try to explore it.”
“These kinds of bottomless hollows are actually not uncommon. It’s just that giant hollows as large as the one beneath Coral Thorn City are relatively rare.”
“In ancient records, hollows of this kind were often called the ‘Navel of the World’ or the ‘Eye of the Abyss.’ Legend says they connect to the reverse side of the world, or are fissures leading to hell and the abyss. But no one knows the answer, because no one has ever truly reached the deepest part of such hollows—or if they did, they never had the chance to come back.”
After hearing his teacher’s words, Dean felt his legs grow even weaker. If someone fell down there, even their corpse would never be found.
‘How could anyone build a city in a place like this…’
Dean forced himself onward across dozens more stone bridges before finally arriving at their destination.
A large arena carved into the rock wall, nearly a thousand meters in length, width, and height.
At this moment, tens of thousands of people were steadily and orderly flowing into the arena through dozens of entrances.
O’Brien estimated that this was about one-tenth of Coral Thorn City’s professionals, but the proportion of powerful ones should have accounted for more than half.
By his intuition, there were at least several hundred Grandmaster-level powerhouses here. It was truly rather terrifying.
The attraction this auction held for the strong truly lived up to its reputation.