The absence of interesting stuff is the most interesting thing happening

The only thing that was somewhat noteworthy about the bus ride was the fact that both Vanessa and Frank weren't there; that didn't mean a lot though, since they ditched school quite often. Nothing else happened on the bus ride. No replies to his messages, no new faces or weird things happening. The only thing that he did was use his Transreceptive Eye to link up with the Barrier and try to gain the level that he could receive per day.

The Barrier had reset itself just as expected, and the wolves were running around again, though there seemed to be more of them now. Maybe there were always more, and they simply despawned once they had reached the needed amount? A different question for a different time.

As John exited the bus, he immediately saw Kim waiting by the school entrance, seemingly looking for someone. As soon as she saw him, he knew that he was the one she was looking for. She made a beeline towards him, pushing multiple students out of the way.

"Newman, finally, I've been expecting you for ten minutes now. I have talked with my father about yesterday, and he agreed to gauge your skills. Luckily, he has no other work to do this afternoon, so you will be expected at our household after school. I will wait for you here after sixth period," she said while already leaving.

That schedule did not sit right with John! He would need the time after school for the interview with the Fateweavers! He immediately went after her shouting her name to make her turn around again, which she thankfully did, "Hey! I'm not free after school. I have an important appointment some time after school."

Kim looked at him with a raised eyebrow while students flooded through the entrance on both sides, "And what is so important that you can't delay it?"

John thought hard about how he could explain this without giving too much away and making the people around them look at him weirdly, "Uh... A job interview? It's something that a lot of people recommended me for, and the evaluation seems to be kinda high priority..."

The Korean girl seemed to understand what he was saying, as her eyes lit up quickly, "Oh... I understand! This shouldn't be a problem if I'm correct." Did she know what was going on? Was she one of the ones who sent a letter of recommendation?

"Uh... did you... did you send a letter as well?" John asked tentatively, not sure how much he should or could reveal about the things going on with the Order and the Gjoskenholm clan.

"As well? For someone that has had his powers for less than three days now, you seem to get around a lot... but yes, after our last encounter, I actually sent a letter to them, or rather father did on my wishes. You have something special there, something that we couldn't evaluate, so I sent a message to them to evaluate you. I didn't expect them to act this quickly though... or to offer you a job, actually... Anyway, you have nothing to worry about concerning schedule clashing. You will see why in due time," Kim explained as she turned around once more and left into the school.

With nothing else to do and unable to ask Kim more questions, John then went into the building as well, preparing for the following day.

English Lit and Math went by with absolutely nothing happening. John just used the time to Meditate and to increase the amount of Mana that would be in his Mana Well. When would Meditation level up? It wasn't the skill that he needed the most, but would certainly be a big boost to his efforts in expanding the Nexus if he had a reliable source of increasing his Mana regeneration... Maybe he should've used that free Skill Level on Meditate? Too late for that now...

He hadn't heard anything from either Astrid or Brun yet, which started to concern him...He was pretty sure Brun had to work at some point and Astrid... well she had to wake up at some point...

John was sitting in his History class by now, and unlike Monday, Mrs. Wentworth showed up today. Now John wouldn't call her 'hot', but she certainly wasn't one of the worst looking teachers that he had. She was just one of the stricter ones and demanded the full attention of the class, and most of the time she got that. Her classes weren't really that interesting (it was History, after all), but she had at least enough motivation to actually teach them something.

Today's topic was the Viking Age, the time when the different Scandinavian countries sailed through the world, raiding and pillaging various smaller countries and expanding their own hometowns with the spoils. She also went on about how the Vikings actually found America roughly 600 years before Columbus did.

Checking his messenger regularly made John realize how useful these new upgrades actually were. He didn't have to check his phone at all anymore; he could even surf the internet without pulling out his phone!

This led to one problem though: Normally, John would mute his phone as soon as he entered the school so the phone wouldn't make noises in the middle of a lesson. Now that he didn't have the phone in his hand though and had no conscious reason to pull it out, he never muted it.

Which led to the precarious situation he found himself in right now: As he received a text from the 'AA' number, his phone made a rather loud sound. A sound that no one could have overheard. That sound?

"LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOYY MMMMMMMMJEEEEEENKIIIIIINS"

While he had the decency to blush out of shame of everyone hearing his ringtone, he was not ashamed of his choice. It was a classic in terms of memes and game related jokes.

Mrs. Wentworth, however, didn't seem too thrilled about this interruption. "Are my lessons so uninteresting that you have to interrupt them with this kind of mockery, Mr. Newman? Hand over your phone and meet me after class." John did so without any resistance; he wanted to check if his interface could deal with his phone if it were a bit farther away.

As he handed her the phone (after he finally muted it) and returned to his seat, he was pleasantly surprised when he saw no change in his interface. Now he could check the message from this mysterious company:

AA [09:50]: Dear customer, your Abyss Auctions account has now been created, filled, and validated. Please use the app currently installing onto your phone to log into your account. Currently, this phone is the only device activated for your account. To activate other devices, please follow the instructions in the FAQ section of your account. Please complete the quick tour after your first login to gain a welcome gift of $2500. We hope you will enjoy our services. With best regards, AA Customer Service

If John were to go by the name of 'Abyss Auctions', he would suspect this service to be some kind of marketplace of magical things that were not able to be traded in any normal way.

Opening the app through his interface was as easy as a thought. The app then appeared in his vision, asking him if he wanted to take the quick tour since this was his first time using the Abyss Auction. The tour explained how John could both buy and sell items through this interface (would this mean that he could also buy and sell stuff from inside his Nexus?).

The tutorial told him that he could either buy items at a stock price or he could bid on various items, depending on the items and its rarity. Most of the money would then directly be transferred to the seller, and it would apparently take any form of currency the buyer had on him or in his possession at the time of purchase. There were some fees that would be included in the price of the wares which would go to the AA, but, according to text on the message, these would be minimal.

Looking over the categories, John could see that he could buy practically anything! Weapons, materials, potions, armor, relic antiques, information, various favors, and services from different 'professionals'. There were also some things that he could buy that he rather not think about if possible. Also, it showed him a feature to request specific things, but the message told him that those would likely be extremely pricey (though John still had no relation to what would be normal-priced in this auction...). Once he would buy something, he could either specify a location to send the wares to, or he could request to receive them to his current location, which would require him to be secluded from the view of any non-Abyssal mortal.

The tour then went on about how John could sell things in the auction. He would have to detail what exactly he wanted to sell, be it tangible or intangible, and provide some kind of proof that he actually had what he claimed to have. Then his offer would be put up in the Auction for the specified price, and a delivery drone of the Abyss Auction would take the item with it to store until either a buyer is found or John retracts the offer. There would be a 5-10% service fee on his offers, depending on the size of the item and its ranking in a 'moral catalog'.

That seemed to be it, as the message told him that he would now receive the $2500 as in-store credit. Now John was left on his own to look through the items. He wanted to see how much he could buy with his current balance of $8,775.

He quickly noticed: not that much. Sure, he could buy mundane materials in bigger capacities, but a lot of the magical and mystical items in the market were way above his current pay grade... Hell, he didn't find a single weapon or accessory below $250,000. There were some materials that he could buy, but without actually knowing what these things were useful for, he wouldn't actually buy them on the off-chance that they were something he could use...

So he went the other way around in his mind and looked up how much the stuff he had found was worth. The Essences, while powerful, were absolutely worthless because he couldn't even trade them as the skill had told him, but there were some other essences that were worth around 2.5 million dollars each. Now that John saw what the 'casual' amounts of money thrown around the Abyss were, he felt very inconsequential about his allotted money...

The scrap metal and electronics were mostly worthless as well, being worth single digit dollar amounts. The Valkyrie's Tear was worth quite a bit with it costing 5,000$ at least in the market, depending on the quality of the item. The Elemental Fangs were about the same and the Elemental Pelt was worth half as much.

The only thing John couldn't identify in term of worth was the Spear of Armageddon since it was obviously a unique piece of weaponry. He would've been surprised if he would even be able to sell it without lying about it.

As he was pondering these things, the bell took him out of his thought and his class. As he was preparing to leave the classroom in a confused daze, Mrs. Wentworth called him back to her with a stern tone in her voice.

"Mr. Newman, a word."