The Bid War

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Debuff removed: Demonic Exhaustion

With a sigh of relief, John sat up and turned off his phone's alarm. It had been set to wake him up right before the debuff went away.

The Gamer got to his feet and rolled his shoulders. It was as if the weight of the world had just been lifted from his shoulders. But now that he could freely move around again, it was time to get to work.

Yet, before he put his phone away, John found himself staring at the last text he’d sent his mother. Which at this point had been marked as read for several hours now.

Mom, I’m sorry, what happened between us wasn’t your fault, just mine. I was able to finish school early today, and am on my way home now. I know you’ll be at work for a while still, but can we please talk when you finish and come home? There’s an explanation… it may be hard to believe, but it’ll be the truth, and you’ll deserve to be angry with me afterward.

His mom hadn’t responded to the topic of the message itself. Instead, she had only recently sent a text that said she would be stuck at work until really late tonight. At the moment, It was already just a bit before 9 p.m. So at this rate, it would likely be well past midnight by the time she did come home.

John deeply inhaled before he released a shaky breath. What came next had to happen for their relationship going forward. Even if he wanted to avoid it forever, his mother didn’t deserve that kind of cowardice. For whatever it was worth, she needed to know the truth behind what happened between them.

That her mind had been influenced by magic. Even if it hadn’t been intentional on his part, responsibility of the consequence still solely fell to him. So there would be no more avoiding it or putting things off. Tonight would be the night.

But in the meantime, John would have the house to himself. While a part of him wanted to do nothing but sit in the living room and stare at the front door to wait for his mom to get home, he knew that would only worsen his anxiety. Instead, it’d be better to keep his mind distracted and busy with something else.

Since the Gamer was about to reveal the Abyss to his mother, it’d probably do him well to brush up his own knowledge about it. So John then went into his home and promptly upstairs to his bedroom. Then once at his computer, he quickly pulled out the note for the IP address of the Abyss Auction and logged into his account.

At the moment, John “only” had just over $5,500 in his Inventory. While that was chump change by Abyssal standards, he discovered that it’d fortunately be more than enough for his purposes, since all he wanted were some basic information packages. And those were pretty cheap due to only containing what most Abyssals already considered to be very common knowledge.

Well, maybe cheap wasn’t quite the right word. Since that was only when comparing the relative cost of the far more expensive options. But even these super basic guides would cost him a few hundred bucks each. Yet despite being the same price of a college textbook, they’d only provide a fraction of the number of pages to read through.

Of the available options, John wanted to buy a total of four. The first pair would be a guide to guilds in general and one specifically about the Order of the Golden Rose. Then one on the Abyss as whole, which was a bit more expensive as it was tailored to those who were new to it. And finally, a basic guide to demons and the Hells. When all was said and done for the pricing, their combined cost was exactly $1348.60.

The one about the Hells was a bit of a last second purchase on his part. John had ultimately decided that if he was going to come clean and reveal the Abyss, might as well toss in his demonic powers too. So he figured that it’d be good to have some reading material on that as well. For his mother, but also for himself too.

Because while he’d already learned a good deal from Blair, he felt there was more to find out. Mostly because of how hectic his introduction to the Abyss had been and her busy schedule. And how that had led to a few informative conversations that were cut off a bit earlier than they likely should have been. In any case, it’d always be nice to have a dumbed down explanation of the Hells versus having to keep up with an expert’s advanced infodump.

John placed the order and leaned back into his seat. For a moment he considered just quickly browsing the web for the short time it’d take for the delivery drone to arrive. Since just like before at Blair’s home, the Abyss Auction guaranteed that his order would take less than 15 minutes. But as he thought about it, the Gamer had already opened his school email in a new tab just out of reflex.

There were a few new ones that awaited his attention. Which was expected for it being mostly done with the school week as a Wednesday night. So they were pretty simple reminders of due homework. And that it being the first week of the semester was no reason to not have tests this Friday.

It would have just been a few days ago that John might have panicked over falling behind on homework and his studying for the first tests. Past him would have pulled out his backpack and immediately got to work. Yet now it all just felt so completely benign. He didn’t feel even the slightest desire to take his backpack out of his inventory and open some dull textbook.

’Well, we’ll see if all that even matters after tomorrow. Since Frank’s the star jock, I’m sure they won’t care even if he’s the one that starts a fight. But if I do and actually smack the shit out of him, there’s a pretty good chance that I might just get expelled on the spot. Only real concern is if his dad freaks out and presses charges for ****. Hmm,’ John thought to himself as he closed the tab.

Abyssals probably had their ways to work around the mundane legal system, right? John wasn’t sure if it would be mentioned in the guides he just bought, but if not, he could always ask Wentworth about it. It would probably be easier for his master if it just went away, compared to him being distracted by a lawsuit and less able to fulfill her instructions.

In any case, that was just a potential problem for future John to deal with if it came up. But now that he was back on the tab for the Auction, he had an idea. Because speaking of Wentworth, there were still a few monster drops in his inventory that she hadn’t been interested in. So while the Gamer was still on the site, why not try to sell them off and see if they were anything?

John clicked around and found that putting something up for sale was actually quite easy. All he needed to do was provide a name and description of the item. Then he could either set it to a price of his choice or simply have it be bid on. The Auction even allowed him to choose whether to show his profile as the seller or to instead remain anonymous.

From there it actually got interesting, though. Because before the listing actually went live, the product would first be picked up by manner of delivery drone. However, what happened next was something he could optionally choose. For a percentage fee of the final sale, the Auction could provide the item with different certificates.

There were a couple of variants of those available. Such as one for basic safety of it not being cursed, toxic to the touch, or otherwise harmful to the buyer upon being received. Then another was one for authenticity. Where the Auction would certify whether the item’s description was truly accurate or not.

As a buyer, John had noticed that these certificates were toggled on by default when searching for stuff. This did mean that the listings were a bit more expensive than some of their non-certified counterparts. However, he really hadn’t felt the need to take a risk of turning them off just to save a few bucks. But since that was the default, the Gamer assumed that having these certificates gave a real leg up to those sellers in terms of visibility.

He decided to put a few different items up for a bid war. Largely because there were no results for something like the Grass Jingasa when he looked it up, so John just didn’t know how much it’d be worth as a base price. The Gamer put up basically every piece of loot from his Barriers now that he was sure Wentworth hadn’t been interested in anything since the Bottles of Guardian Extract.

So in summary, John decided to list the eight Grass Pods, Grass Jingasa, Puddle Slime Jelly, and Concrete Mandible. Despite being a Tier One Barrier, the fountain fairies sadly hadn’t dropped any new goodies for him. Though even if they had, he’d have needed to wait and first see if his teacher wanted them. He also figured that for the bidding itself, $250 was a low enough starting price and set it to last for exactly 72 hours.

He was plain with his descriptions, more or less just copying what Observe said for each item. Though he did omit any mentions of the Gamer or that they were from a Barrier. Since his power to create loot was something that was worth being part of Wentworth’s contract, it’d probably be better to not freely give that kind of info away. Then even though it’d cut into his profit margin by a fair bit, he did go with getting an Auction certificate for both authenticity and safety.

Once that was done, John had little more to do than just wait around. The first delivery drone eventually came by with the guides he’d ordered. Then a few minutes later, the second arrived to take away the items he was selling. It was also kind of satisfying to have those items gone, since it meant that he’d just freed up four extra slots of his inventory.

The Gamer looked back to his monitor, and was pleasantly surprised to see that his listings were already certified and live. That had taken way less time than he’d have expected. Magic was obviously heavily involved, but even so, that was extremely quick in terms of processing speed. But he supposed that kind of efficiency was part of why the Auction had such a major presence as the main facilitator of trade within the Abyss.

“Well, there probably won’t even be any activity for a while. Might as well just leave it alone and check on the bids la-” John’s mumbling was cut off as his eyes widened. The Grass Jingasa had already gotten updated. Just like that, the bid jumped from the base $250 to $400.

Similar action then quickly happened to the other items as well. The Concrete Mandible went up by $50, Grass Pods by $100, and so on. He’d been hesitant about whether $250 for the base price was too high or if maybe he should have just started at $100 to begin with. But concern clearly didn’t matter as the bids just kept ticking up the cost for each item.

John stared at the screen, almost mesmerized by what he was seeing. He tried to crack open one of the guidebooks to actually start reading them, but the Gamer found it impossible to concentrate as each update to his bids yanked away his attention. In less than thirty minutes, the Grass Jingasa was the first to cross a thousand bucks. Yet the others weren't that far behind as they each steadily climbed up the hundreds.

Eventually, a bit over two hours had passed since his stuff went live on the Auction. The other items had started to slow down by now at around a thousand. But the Grass Jingasa was a different story. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand. It showed zero signs of slowing down as it made the climb to four thousand. If anything, the bid price only seemed to be accelerating as it went up.

The Gamer had no idea who was currently bidding on the item. But from the way some bids seemed to be coming right after another as practically a pair, he guessed that two people were currently in a war. While he’d be more than happy for them to drive up the price further and put more cash in his pocket, wasn’t this a bit much for just one simple item?

It was then that John felt his phone vibrate. Only now realizing just how much the time had gotten away from him, he quickly pulled it out. There he saw a new text, and he felt his stomach twist with anxiety. His mom would be home in just a couple of minutes.