The Auction House (4)
The gothic-lolita dress the shady merchant had procured turned out to be built on a notoriously impractical design.
If I hadn't had Erin and several other helpers at my side, I probably wouldn't even have attempted putting it on.
"What a lovely garment. You can tell the artisan poured real care into every detail."
I'd take quality goods over cheap junk any day, but seriously—why does something like this even exist?
None of you are ever going to wear an outfit like this.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became: this was just the shady merchant's personal taste, wasn't it?!
Even as the man's stock plummeted in my private rankings, Erin and the Newman household staff never stopped moving their hands, and before long my disguise was complete.
The girl reflected in the mirror the merchant had brought was a young beauty tinged with a faintly gloomy air.
Her long red hair was hidden away beneath a hat, her sharp eyes tucked under the brim. Colored lenses changed the shade of her irises, and pale makeup had washed the life from her skin—until she'd become an entirely different person altogether.
How could so little alteration change someone this much? She didn't even look like me!
The man was a disgusting pervert, but maybe his eye and his skill were the genuine article after all.
As I turned to check that the dress had been fitted properly, an admiring sigh escaped me before I could stop it.
...It does suit me, though.
I look like a living doll.
Just as I was marveling at my reflection, the face-obsessed fox beside me smacked her lips.
"Hoooh. This has its own charm, I must say. Chomp, chomp."
Could you please restrain yourself?
"Face-obsessed fox. Tone it down, or I'm burying you in the Aln knight order's laundry pile."
"Such cruelty!"
Needless to say, my voice, my speech patterns, my gestures—nothing about them had changed. With the Mesugaki skill active, how could they possibly?
The merchant hadn't expected anything different either, apparently, because before heading to the auction house he made me promise a few things.
Don't speak. Don't step forward or act on my own. If I have something to say, write it in a notebook and show him. And so on.
Boiled down, all of it amounted to this: from the moment we entered the auction house until we left, my only job was to stand behind him and the others like a doll.
Easy. All I have to do is stay quiet.
Forsell and the Newman people, who didn't know me well, watched me with visible unease, but people like Erin, who knew me properly, weren't worried in the slightest.
I'm not the Lucy of the old days anymore, after all. There's no way I'd wreck a simple task like standing still by flooring the accelerator.
Somehow, I find myself nervous.
Grandpa?! You of all people don't trust me?!
Why would you act like this, of all people!
You know my true nature better than anyone alive!
That is precisely why, lass.
What exactly is wrong with me?!
I demanded an answer, indignant at the injustice, but Grandpa offered no further rebuttal.
Hmph. If you have no counterargument, don't resort to cheap potshots.
Just watch! At this auction I won't say a single word!
Even walking through the streets after leaving the Newman stronghold, I drew stares from every direction.
The meaning behind those stares, however, was different from before. When I walked abroad in Lucy's own form, terror had been written across every face. But now?
All I'd done was make the name Lucy Aln disappear, and suddenly every gaze was brimming with goodwill.
The power of a high Charm stat, I suppose.
That said, a high Charm stat doesn't always work in your favor.
Charm radiating from someone who looks frail and helpless tends to invite a bad kind of touch.
Out in the crowd, I spotted a man extending a hand toward me.
A perfectly ordinary piece of trash.
Mob-tier vermin the current me could toy with using one hand.
Dodging his outstretched hand would have been trivially easy, but I didn't move.
I'd promised not to, after all—and I had something to lean on if things went sideways.
"You want to die?"
Just as I had disguised myself, Forsell and Erin had made only minimal alterations to their appearances.
Neither of them had features as distinctive as mine, so disguising them was simple. The moment an ugly, burly middle-aged man—the remade Forsell—and a silent, sour-faced woman—the remade Erin—glared at him, the man recoiled in horror and prostrated himself on the ground.
Perhaps that was thanks to the Intimidation skill Forsell had displayed.
After that one utterance drifted past, a path through the crowd opened up naturally, and I walked on in the shadow of the others.
Complaining you hated this, yet you seem remarkably at peace.
It can't be helped, that's all.
Part of it was resignation—without this, I couldn't get into the auction house at all.
And besides, right now I wasn't Lucy Aln. I was someone else entirely.
A daydream that evaporates in a single instant—what's the point of holding onto feelings over that?
And your honest opinion?
I'm dying of embarrassment.
Even now I was regretting this on a loop, once per breath like clockwork.
Why is every single man staring at me?! These are the same guys who couldn't even meet my eyes when I was in my real body!
Agh. I want to finish this job and throw this whole outfit off right now.
Grumbling to myself as I walked, I found the auction house looming into view before I knew it.
Getting inside proved no great hardship either.
The merchant at the front presented the guards with a noble writ under some convoluted name to introduce us, and the guards—who were clearly on familiar terms with him—waved us straight through without a shred of suspicion.
The auction must have been about to begin, because the hall was bustling with people.
Among them, quite a few gazes landed on me before sliding away.
Admiration at the pretty face. Curiosity about which family's daughter I belonged to. Slimy stares lingering in the silence.
Senses honed razor-sharp by countless ordeals caught every single one of them without missing a beat.
Mmm. Maybe I'm starting to understand why Grandpa said there was no way I could keep quiet.
"Now then, my lady. You may proceed inside."
For all his shifty appearance, the merchant handled his work quickly and reliably. The place he led us to was a private box within the auction house—a spot removed from the crowd, where one could sit in comfort.
"You may relax here, but please refrain from raising your voice. One never knows who might be listening."
Freed at last from the press of staring eyes, I let out a long sigh and leaned back into the chair.
"Good day to you all! Purg, at your service, presiding over this auction!"
Before long the curtain over the central stage drew back to reveal a lone figure. A middle-aged man distinguished by a meticulously groomed mustache, his voice ringing clear enough to burrow straight into the ear, announced the auction's beginning.
The lots that came up in the early rounds were, for the most part, things the old Lucy would have gone mad for.
In other words—luxuries. Rings and necklaces studded with rare gemstones. That sort of thing.
The noblewomen in attendance hurled gold coins at them, while I watched with wearied detachment.
From a gamer's perspective, that stuff was nothing but vendor trash.
Once the opening rounds passed, a few genuinely useful items finally began to appear—among them several pieces I'd intended to buy as gifts for others.
Even those, however, I let slide by.
To preserve my budget in case of an unexpected emergency.
So I waited, and waited, and waited some more—until at last the item I'd been hoping for made its appearance.
A stone tablet that glows when infused with divinity.
"This tablet is no ordinary object. When one devoted to the divine imbues it with their faith, it emits a warm, gentle light. In other words, an item bearing the will of the all-knowing, all-powerful Chief God Himself. And if you look here, you'll find an inscription carved in the distant past that remains vivid to this very day—"
The auctioneer was doing his absolute best to wrap the thing in gold paper, but I paid him no mind.
Instead, I activated my Appraisal skill.
There was a considerable distance between my box and the stage, but an Appraisal skill leveled through long, patient grinding rose to the occasion.
Stone Tablet That Glows When Infused with Divinity
A stone tablet that emits a bright light when filled with holy power. Engraved upon its surface is the following inscription: "Protect and Guard."
Eyes going wide as I read those words, I clenched my fist with a laugh.
That's the key.
The key to a hidden item.
The thing needed to open a door so thoroughly tucked away in the most unremarkable corner of the world that not a single player had ever suspected anything was there.
Me, who steeled herself to create an all-time embarrassing chapter of her own history and put on the gothic-lolita dress anyway! Good job, me!
If I'd fled out of sheer mortification, I never would have gotten my hands on this treasure!
Certain of it now, I tugged at the merchant's sleeve, and he leaned in with a whisper.
"That item will fetch quite a price. How high am I authorized to go?"
Three hundred gold.
"Three hundred gold."
This money had been squeezed out of the Georg family.
On top of everything we'd suffered thanks to that son of theirs, I'd demanded payment for saving Menesteil from annihilation.
Originally I'd meant to accept a modest settlement, but then Karia inserted herself into the negotiations and everything changed.
The woman who once ruled the kingdom's underworld was intimately familiar with the art of the deal, after all.
Wielding her position as my proxy, Karia bled Count Georg's coffers dry.
The result: I walked away from the Georg family not only with a heap of potions, scrolls, and enchanted items, but an enormous sum of gold as well.
At the time I'd wondered if she hadn't overdone it. Now, the story was rather different.
The rewards Karia secured back then were powering me up even now.
"Are we purchasing it no matter what?"
Obviously.
"Understood."
"A relic connected to the almighty Chief God Himself commands a fitting starting price! We shall begin at ten gold!"
The bidding climbs steeply.
An item that opened at ten had already reached one hundred before I noticed, and by the time I gathered my wits it had arrived at two hundred.
Around then, the others coveting it seemed to start feeling the pinch as well, hesitating over whether to raise their paddles.
Seeing this, the merchant raised his paddle with theatrical flourish and called out loudly.
"Two fifteen!"
"Two hundred and fifteen gold on the table!"
With the price leaping in a single bound, paddles began dropping one by one across the seats of the auction hall.
I can't say for certain, but the merchant's shout seems to have shattered their appetite for the purchase.
"Anyone else? I shall now call it three times! Two fifteen!"
Two hundred and fifteen gold, huh.
It's a hefty expense, but fine. Fair enough, considering what that tablet gets me. Agh, though—this is going to pile more work onto my vacation.
"Two fifteen!"
After buying Benedict's gift, I'll ask him to take me on another trip so I can give it to him properly.
Wait—will that be hard in my current body?
Hmm. In that case—
"Two fif—"
"Two hundred fifty."
Midway through scheming, utterly convinced the tablet would soon be in my hands, someone on the far side of the hall raised a paddle.
Two hundred and fifty gold?!
They're jumping the price by that much in a single bid?!
Even the auctioneer was stunned into silence—and in that hush, I concentrated divinity into my eyes to identify the bidder.
I needed to know exactly who was after it.
The instant I recognized the woman sitting bolt upright in another private box, wearing a stern, dignified expression, a curse echoed through my skull.
Isabel Artea.
Mistress of the Artea territory on the coast, and the woman who had seized an immense fortune through her preternatural talent for trade.
She was denounced for harboring greed unbecoming of a noble, yet was living proof that most problems in this world could be solved with money.
And her most defining trait—
The woman maniacally collected anything and everything related to the Chief God.
...
I think we're completely screwed?