To Me, the Auction Is Murder (3)
Freya stared at Lee Jun, unblinking. Both of her eyes glowed with a strange, quiet luminescence.
“Do you see something?”
“Well now. Curious, are you?”
“No.”
Those eyes were special. The left one above all. That brown eye, ordinary at a glance, was in truth an artifact bestowed by a god. And yet despite seeing her face again after so long, the two of them had no time to trade small talk — the auction would begin in thirty minutes.
She leaned back against her chair and cut straight to the point.
“You're here for the S-Class, aren't you?”
“You know me well.”
“Kyahaha! This one knows all!”
Freya grinned, her blue hair swaying with the motion. Neglected bristles that stuck out like a mutt's coat — but with that much volume, he couldn't help wanting to run a hand through it once.
“Everyone here wants the same thing anyway, don't they?”
“Not everyone. Most of them couldn't even dream of looking at something that big.”
That was true as well. Everyone here probably knew it already — that the S-Class gate would end up going to one of the mega guilds, no matter what. It was too plain and obvious to even feel bitter about. Everyone would think that way.
Except for a single person.
Except Lee Jun.
“You actually mean to win it, I see.”
“Of course. Why else would I have come?”
“Tenacious as ever. You threw everything else away.”
“I stacked up plenty of money instead.”
“That's right! Hey, because of you I spent far more than I budgeted!”
“If you'd given up, your spending would've been zero.”
“Haah. Not a single word given, is it.”
Freya sighed and folded her arms, sulking with all her might. Good grief — where did the old woman put her years, exactly.
“Un-sulk yourself, and tell me later what criteria you'll be judging on.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. Don't be like that.”
“No, no~ I don't want my head exploding~”
“……”
Lee Jun regarded the pint-sized tyrant before him with a weary, complicated look. Time was short — why did she have to be like this?
“You know I'm not in any position to do things for you anymore. I told you, I retired.”
“Who said this one wants any such thing? Fine, fine. This one takes her leave.”
Freya rose from her seat, face puffed up in a pout. Lee Jun, desperate to catch her, finally opened his mouth.
“…Come visit sometime.”
“Truly?”
“Yes, come visit. Come and go freely, like it's your own home. Satisfied?”
“KYAHAHAHA! You should have said so from the start! Fine! This one shall come whenever she pleases!”
Watching her laugh at last with utter satisfaction, Lee Jun pressed a hand to his forehead. Right — who in the world could ever stop her?
Freya, mid-cackle, tossed him something the size of his palm. Thud— It was surprisingly heavy when it landed in his hand.
“……”
“You know better than I what that means. This one can't help much with today's auction — so consider that your compensation for coming here to claim it.”
Resting in his palm was a bronze-colored lock. It was, unmistakably, a familiar thing.
“…The Artificial Space.”
“Aye. Kyle left it in this one's keeping. Said to hand it to you when the time was right.”
“And its location?”
“How would this one know? That's your homework.”
Lee Jun looked down at the lock with a tangled expression. Then he drew a single key from his Pocket and fitted it to the lock — the key he'd received as a reward on the first floor of the Ant Nest.
“……”
It slid in perfectly. It wasn't seated at the right position, so the key wouldn't turn — but it went in regardless. Which meant this key was the matching pair.
“What the hell are you, you bastard, Kyle…”
Lee Jun gazed at the lock with a heart full of conflicting feelings. Truly… truly complicated ones.
The auction will resume in ten minutes. All bidders, please return to your seats and prepare.
“Ah, I'm off. Good luck with your auction prep.”
Freya was already halfway across the hall, practically skipping down the stairs. And Lee Jun, still clutching the lock in his hand, stared into empty air for a while. They were supposed to have talked about the auction… and the conversation had been derailed because of this thing.
“……”
“Boss, did something happen?”
“…No. Nothing happened.”
Seo Yoon returned shortly after, and the auction resumed. But even by then, Lee Jun had not yet managed to sort through the chaos in his head.
The auction began anew, and the hall quickly grew heated. The format of a gate auction was simple. Teams hoping to bid stepped forward one by one and made their case before the judges. Once the pitch round continued until no more hopefuls remained, the judges deliberated and selected a single winner. And the fairness of that process… was guaranteed by what was about to take place.
“We will now resume the auction. Judges, please come forward.”
At the emcee's words, the five judges rose and approached the stage. Each of them picked up the thick necklace laid out before them.
“When you are ready, please don the necklace.”
Click— clank—
All five judges fastened their Falsehood Predators around their necks. And Freya was the first to read the oath aloud.
“I swear that I stand here to protect the people and the nation, and that I shall judge this auction with fairness and justice.”
One by one they recited the oath, and only after the same words had rung out five times in total did the auction proper begin.
It proceeded smoothly. Setting aside the final item — Taesan's S-Class gate — every lot was more or less mediocre. Low-ranked gates made for low-drama judging, inevitably. And then, at long last, the grand final auction commenced.
The S-Class gate. The item whose very name set hearts racing rose onto the scales, and every guild with any muscle to flex raised its hand to bid.
And among them, naturally, was Lee Jun.
“Twelve participating teams… this is going to take forever.”
Lee Jun sighed and watched Tamra's vice guildmaster climb onto the stage.
“Let's see… what number is Seolwon?”
“Seolwon is tenth. Samhwa's eleventh, and we're last.”
“Hmm.”
With bored eyes fixed on the stage, Lee Jun rehearsed his upcoming pitch in his head. Prepare, prepare, and prepare some more. And as the time wore on, he watched Lee Hyeon-ah return to her seat.
“Seolwon is… definitely a formidable opponent.”
“We should count ourselves lucky. That Yoon Seol didn't go up there — Lee Hyeon-ah did instead.”
Perhaps Yoon Seol's visit to the auction hall really had been decided at the last minute, because the pitch had been delivered by Vice Guildmaster Lee Hyeon-ah rather than the guildmaster herself. A blessing in disguise, all things considered.
Then Samhwa Group's planning director took the stage. Next after them came Lee Jun's turn. He quietly loosened his neck and waited for his turn.
Then.
Bzzz—
The phone in his pocket buzzed. He checked it — a single message. The sender was Yoon Seol. She, seated at the far opposite end of the auction hall, was opening a conversation with him.
“……”
What was this? Her message was blunt and simple. Surely it wasn't just taunting — the nuance read like an offer to help. And yet, of course, she would never simply help for free.
She would inevitably want something in return.
“…Whew.”
He didn't care. If she was going to help, joining forces inside the gate was a perfectly acceptable price. Besides, the true purpose of this gate was the hidden reward — the hidden piece, in other words. Hidden pieces in dungeons and gates were things that remained difficult to obtain even when you knew the conditions. Someone who didn't even know a hidden piece existed would have a hard time stealing it. And given Seolwon's particular traits, this gate especially — of that much, he could be certain.
The S-Class gate they would be winning shortly after this. She was proposing they settle the matter inside it. But… gain? It wasn't as though they'd be competing to kill the boss — what even counted as gain?
“…Not funny in the slightest.”
Regardless. If it went as Yoon Seol proposed, she meant to contest every byproduct that came out of that gate. Honestly, it was a hopelessly vague criterion that couldn't be quantified on paper. What was more, the larger party would naturally hold the advantage — boss rewards were divided equally among participants by principle.
That wasn't convention or custom, either. It was written explicitly into the law. Stolen experience points were one thing, but everything else had to follow the letter of the law.
And yet Lee Jun could accept even that. Because this side had the hidden piece. Boss, schmoss — the hidden piece of an S-Class gate settled everything. In truth, this was a bet he could not lose.
Saying anything meant: you propose first. Lee Jun was only too glad to oblige.
…You're accepting that far too readily.
Honestly, Seolwon didn't have much it could demand of Lee Jun. There was precious little an individual could offer a guild. If he were still Vice Chairman of the Association, perhaps — but now he held no such leverage. The worst thing he could imagine was them demanding Seo Yoon back. That was the one move that could deal him the gravest blow.
No — that was what he'd assumed.
But Yoon Seol's answer blew past every expectation he had.
Freeze—
For a moment, Lee Jun couldn't even press a single key on his phone.
'The offer Lee Hyeon-ah made back then. Don't tell me it came from even higher up…?'
What Lee Hyeon-ah had said at the Seoul Dungeon resurfaced in his mind. She had definitely told him to come join Seolwon. At the time he'd dismissed it as pure needling — to think she'd been serious.
'What do I do.'
He was more than confident he could win the bet itself. But one thing still lingered uneasily in the corner of his chest. The Ant Nest.
'If this gate's rewards changed too…'
If, in the end, he failed to obtain the hidden piece — then this bet would become an overwhelmingly lopsided fight. A crack had opened in his trust in his own information, and it bred a one-percent flicker of doubt.
'No. Keep it simple.'
An S-Class gate carried profound meaning. Within its depths, unlike the lower-grade gates, a story — or a history — lay sleeping. From S-Class upward, they were fragments of things that had genuinely happened. In fact, according to every piece of data he had examined since his regression until now, not a single gate had ever differed from its previous cycle. Not one — including all three of the S-Class gates.
'Maybe that one place is the only exception. The Ant Nest is… different.'
That place was special. Wherever a gate break occurred, the area remained a dungeon forever — and a dungeon born inside such a dungeon was called a double dungeon. But the Ant Nest was not a dungeon. There was no proper word to define it, hence the name; strictly speaking, the Ant Nest was not a double dungeon at all. A gate born within a dungeon… was that the right way to put it? It had never been a normal place to begin with, so the phenomenon of regression might well have failed to touch it.
'…Then again, talking about "normal" in a place as abnormal as a gate or a dungeon is laughable in itself.'
“……”
Unable to wait out his brooding, Yoon Seol pressed him again by text.
Right. Samhwa Group's pitch was about to end. Then would come Lee Jun's turn — the final slot. If she'd wanted to propose a wager, she could have raised it leisurely before the auction even began. Targeting such a suffocating sliver of timing was probably a deliberate move to leave him no room to think.
“…Tsk.”
Lee Jun lifted his eyes from the narrow phone screen and looked toward where Yoon Seol sat. As it happened, she was looking at him too. The two of them met each other's crimson gaze — then turned their eyes back to their phones at exactly the same moment.
Of course. She assumed she already had things her way. But what was he to do about this? The wager Yoon Seol had conceived was built on the presumption that Lee Jun would not win this gate — hence her offer to help him claim it.
But here was the thing.
Lee Jun had confidence. Confidence that he could persuade the judges seated over there and carry this auction to victory himself.
Everyone who entered an auction came through those doors carrying the same conviction: I will win the item I want. Lee Jun had come here with exactly that conviction. And what set him apart from the other dreamers… was that he possessed the perfect weapon to back up a perfect plan.
The terms of the wager. A bet, at its heart, was an act of weighing. The scales had to hang level for a wager to stand. Lee Jun had just unbuckled every shackle weighted on his own side — which meant the scales would now tip entirely toward Yoon Seol. To bring them level again, she would have to surrender more of her own weight in gain.
The core embedded in Yoon Seol's staff — the Heart of the Ice Dragon. The elixir that expanded the body's mana capacity — the Ten-Thousand-Year Ice Essence. And the shard of ice that enabled small-scale spatial distortion — Styx's Shard.
This was a gamble. She had thrown down the merger first, wielding the authority of a guildmaster — and merger was a polite word for swallowing him whole. Words carried weight, and the higher the speaker's station, the heavier they grew. A statement from someone of Yoon Seol's caliber… was far too heavy to simply sweep aside.
There it was.
Clap clap clap clap—
At the same moment, Samhwa Group's pitch concluded, and a round of polite applause rolled through the hall. Only one team remained before the final judging.
Lee Jun found himself, for no particular reason, looking down at the nameplate set before him.
“Please prepare for the next turn.”
Scrape—
Lee Jun pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. His footsteps were light. Having heard everything the other guilds had prepared, he was certain of one thing.
This gate — I'm the one who's going to win it.