First Time at the Auction House
Aside from the times he'd taken reports and scrubbed garbage posts masquerading as trade listings out of the trade window and auction house, he had never once actually used either system.
So when Jessica brought it up, he felt a little flutter of excitement(?) and decided to give it a try.
Of course, the moment he actually went to do it, the whole thing started feeling uncomfortably like human trafficking, and the weirdness hit him hard…
"Commander, are you scared?"
"…Inspect those two's condition right now. It's time for a hero to step up!"
The second Jessica casually cast You chicken? at him, he decided that backing down was not an option. A real man charged straight through the front.
But no matter how determined he was to charge head-on, diving into a "trade" with zero knowledge and zero preparation was still a terrible idea.
> When using this system, the exclusive currency Gold is required.
> This is distinct from the rare mineral "gold ore" — a currency usable only here.
> Commander's remaining currency: 100 Gold
The moment he opened the auction house, the guide message popped up on its own. He confirmed nothing had changed on that front, then decided — for the first time since being possessed into this world — to try earning Gold through the auction house instead of player-to-player trades.
But as always, compared to the game he'd once played, the state of things had undergone some truly dramatic upheavals.
Even the basic UI looked nothing like what he remembered. On top of that, he'd quit the game a full three years before getting possessed, and another year had already passed since then. In practical terms, he was walking back in after four entire years.
"Uwaaaagh."
For sale: S-grade Superhuman, never used. (1)
Looking at the trade-slash-auction window that had somehow gotten even more complicated, he felt his brain start to go fuzzy.
The one silver lining, at least, was that the fee wasn't prepaid.
Of course, his first reaction had been pure rage — Are you kidding me, I've only got 100 Gold and you want 240 for the fee?! — and he'd nearly exploded on the spot.
"Hmm, Commander? Looking at this, the fee seems to be charged after the fact."
"Hm?"
"If you receive the market value of 1,200 Gold, they deduct 240 from that."
"Huuuuh."
So the warning text was just worded weirdly. In practice, they took the fee separately after the trade was complete.
Just to be safe, he dug through the gallery too…
[Screenshot of the auction house guide, with the problematic line highlighted]
"Registration fees are non-refundable." ← this part right here
This does NOT mean they pull the fee out of your wallet upfront.
The registration fee gets deducted all at once later, when you finalize payment on an item that actually won its auction.
Newbies don't know this and avoid the auction house entirely, and you can feel the traffic tanking because of it, so I'm posting this.
yy
In short: the admins had done something stupid, and that was why the wording was so bizarre. The actual system worked the way they'd assumed — sell first, take the fee after.
Feeling considerably more at ease, he was able to focus on the task at hand.
There was just one critical problem…
The auction house system was so needlessly convoluted it might as well have been written in cipher. The moment he saw it, he dropped into a near-groggy state — at which point Jessica, who was twice as smart as him, started poking around the trade window in his place.
More precisely: Jessica could only view the Commander's UI and the gallery. She couldn't actually operate any of it herself, so he still had to serve as her hands.
Regardless — factoring in how sharply his intelligence tended to crater in situations like this — they went with Jessica's IQ of 250 plus his IQ of 50.
A perfect combined IQ of 300, plus his hands, put to work on escaping this mess.
And after all that effort, they finally managed to list the two Superhumans currently sitting in the base.
"Support characters really are the aristocracy, huh. Same S-grade, and the starting bid is more than double."
"That's partly because Leti is a close-combat support type, so there's a floor on her starting bid, Commander."
"Fascinating."
Human trafficking or not, he decided to take a quick look at what other users currently had up for auction.
And right then, he found a lively S-grade Superhuman listing from another player that was getting plenty of action…
"Oh…"
Seeing a final price that had nearly doubled, the thought that their own prisoners-slash-merchandise(?) might fetch something in that range started blooming nicely in his mind.
Which was why — even with Ignis and Partia alternating day by day to maintain a full twenty-four-hour watch —
"Hell yeah. At minimum we're looking at 2,500 or even 3,000 Gold each, right?"
"Seems that way, Commander."