In which a table scans something for an eternity

Faith and John appeared once more inside the office. The light initially blinded John entirely, reminding him of the Eyes of the Owl, which he immediately took off. Once his eyes had adjusted, he saw that it had surprisingly reverted to being a boring old office in their absence.

He quickly handed Faith a rat claw for her to study, which she eagerly took and hurried over to the desk with. She dropped it carefully onto the flat surface before turning her attention toward the actual desk and began to read the surface itself.

Upon further inspection by John, who had initially shoved the desk into the back of his mind as simply furniture, it was revealed that the surface of the desk seemed to be some kind of digital interface in and of itself. This seemed to be a more advanced version of some basic prototype displays, but nothing even close to what was packed into the table, although all together this wasn’t too surprising considering what he had seen recently, with the whole magical revelation and stuff.

Attempts to read the details displayed on the desk only revealed what he had already supposed, that it was scanning the object for various magical and physical properties. With nothing to do except waste time and wait, he took a seat in the corner and looked through his popups and achievements.

Picking a side.
Become affiliated or join a guild, guess you’re not totally alone now.
+10 XP
+1 Cha

You are over-encumbered and cannot run.
Fill your inventory to the brim. There’s nobody sworn to carry your burdens this time.
+5 Inventory Slots

Rewards of epic proportions.
Receive one or more items of Epic rarity.
+15 XP
+$250

Rewards fit for a legend.
Receive one or more items of Legendary rarity.
+30 XP
+$500

You’re the Bomb!
Indirectly or directly kill 25+ Monsters using AOE damage.
+25 XP
+1 Int

Having a Blast! (Heh, that pun was too easy)
Indirectly or directly kill 50+ Monsters using AOE damage.
+2 Int

Cooperative Slaughter
Clear a barrier with the assistance of a non-bound/contracted intelligent being.
+15 XP

He wondered how much longer this period of mass achievement spam would last. Likely not long, considering the inevitable increase in difficulty between each achievement as with any game to give him a semblance of a challenge.

A thought struck John once again and he remembered the question he had immediately forgotten after giving Faith the claw and going through the achievements. He determined himself to ask Faith before it left his train of thought and the station entirely.

Pulling out the Blade of Many revealed the true weight that he hadn’t felt, having just put it into his inventory directly from the ground. The tip dipped towards the ground before his other hand instinctively took hold of the hilt. He was barely able to keep it aloft with both hands, and even then, that was a stretch.

Now fully bathed in the light, it was of truly beautiful craftsmanship, without any immediately obvious flaws, design or other. Speaking of which, John went to look back at the item sheet for it.

Well, at least the symbolism checked out in terms of the weight. John thought it was a quite good weapon, aside from the massive requirements he would need to use it effectively that directly resulted from the massive weight of the blade. It seemed as if he wasn’t able to carry the weight of the world after all.

“Where can I sell this sword? I can barely carry it, let alone swing it. I don’t really have a need for it, but scrapping it for materials just seems like a waste.”

Glancing away from the tabletop, Faith stared at him for a moment before facepalming, “I shouldn’t expect you to know, I suppose, even if it is common sense for anyone in the Abyss. The Abyss Auction is where you’ll want to go to. It’s pretty much magical ebay.”

Leaning back into the office chair, Faith opened and began to rummage through one of the drawers in the desk. “Oh! And before I forget, take this and enter the code on the card when you’re making the account. Since we have some ties with them, you’ll get some credit to spend.”

After a moment, she apparently found what she was looking for and chucked a small card towards John. She clearly had done something to mess it up, as it did what thrown paper tends to do and floated uselessly to the floor.

“This is clearly not my brightest moment...” Faith quietly bemoaned, hoping John had not noticed despite both of them staring at the card before attempting to play it off by casually manipulating the gravity to direct it towards John’s hand once again.

Thankfully it worked the second time around, being caught between John’s fingers as he put the sword back into his inventory.

Pretending like the last few moments had never occured, John studied the card he had been given. It was a simple white card with golden trim on one edge, housing only the words “Abyss Auction”, a similarly themed web address, and a string of text and numbers that he assumed was the code Faith had talked about.

John took out his phone before entering the provided url into his search bar. A few moments later, the page had fully loaded with a bit of more delay and redirections than what he was used to.

After looking around for a few moments, he found the option to create an account, which he took a look at. Finding no abnormalities, John began filling his information in, a process that took only a few minutes. But when it came to display name, he found himself stuck.

He was somewhat tempted to go with Jeehan, the name he used for everything, but well, what was even the point of hiding your identity with something so traceable out there?

I need something new… something memorable but so out of the blue it’ll hide my identity. How about… Trailblazer

Finding no reason not to go by this, John entered this and the rest of the required information. Continuing further into the creation process, he was met with the option to enter a code from any of their partners.

Pulling out the card Faith had given him, John entered the code into his phone, catching an error in it that he then corrected. Abruptly, as soon as the account creation had finished and everything had loaded, the printed ink on the card began to shift in front of his very eyes. Within a matter of seconds, the code had been replaced by “Code Expired.”, seeming not even the slightest bit out of place.

Putting magically moving ink down on his list of Abyssal magical bullshit he had seen so far, John turned his attention once more to his phone. There was a message verifying that there had been a complimentary $15k added to his account.

Reading this a few more times to make sure he hadn’t misread it and a few times after that to make sure once again, John turned his attention towards Faith.

“Exactly how fucked up is the Abyssal economy if 15k can be freely given away like this?"

“Surprisingly not very, it’s just that the people who make the stuff really like price gouging people because of the monopoly of high-grade stuff. So the price of nearly everything rises to account for this.”

“Huh…” This made sense to John, since he doubted anti-monopoly laws existed in any semblance, considering the lack of a central government he had observed so far.

Getting back onto the topic of shopping, John quickly scrolled down to see listings and categories of all kinds of stuff. Such as armor, magic, weapons, everything you’d expect from, as Faith had put it, “pretty much magical ebay.”

But more importantly, everything John could see at the moment was far outside of his current price range. Soon finding a filtering function, he activated that with a maximum price of what he currently had.

This time he was met with things that seemed much more suitable, although still ludicrously expensive compared to what John was used to. But as much as he would like to browse the rapidly changing pages of stuff, he was here to sell the sword.

Quickly finding the option to create a listing, he took a picture of the blade before pretty much copying down what Observe listed it as, although with a few liberties to make sure it sounded a tad better than it actually was. However, John didn’t quite trust his ability to estimate value for obvious reasons.

“What should I list for a starting price? Should I include a flat buyout price as well?”

Humming for a moment before replying, Faith said, “I’d say… about five thousand for starting price? And yeah, you probably should. Some people only go after guaranteed things and or don’t like the hassle of a potential bidding war. As a rule of thumb, try to go for five times the starting price.”

Shrugging at that, John filled all of that in and reviewed it to make sure there weren’t any errors before correcting a couple and releasing the whole thing to the hounds.

To his surprise, the blade vanished from his inventory and a confirmation appeared to verify the listing. Disinterested in waiting for people to bid or for the time it took for the listing to go private once more, John moved to put his phone away but quickly texted his mother that he might not be home once he got back from school and that he was just doing something with friends.

The desk seemed to complete its analysis of the rat claw that John had given Faith with a small ding, and she moved to read the data before a confused look came over her face.