Starting Bid: One Gold
A secret taste? So what if there wasn't a single arm left to grab a lifeline — I had wings, didn't I? Wings that could glide free and easy through the open sky...
Thwack-
"Huh...?"
Vmmm-
That crazy bastard — it wasn't even a "you're coming with me" gesture. It had simply hooked my ankle with the one tentacle it had left.
I knew I was asking a lot. I couldn't expect us to fall into each other's arms for a beautiful finish after a magnificent duel of blood, but surely it could at least have conceded defeat and died with a little heartwarming sportsmanship?
"SHIIIIIT!!!"
Thanks to that jellyfish bastard throwing its tantrum right to the bitter end, I went plummeting into the depths below, cursing up a storm the whole way down.
Dang Muyeong was firmly of the belief that every last injustice in this world landed squarely on him — but the truth was, the situation he now found himself in was entirely of his own making.
For starters, the Blood Spear he'd hurled on a careless whim had smashed the ground to bits, and every drop of the groundwater trapped beneath came gushing out through the cracks...
Then he'd played dragon and gleefully sprinkled Blood Rain all over the place to fill the gaps back in — only to suck every last bit of it out again...
And finally, into that ground — now a hollow shell of its former self — he'd fired yet another witless blast. What chance did even the bedrock of the earth itself have of holding that up?
Thus, in the end, down he went along with everything else. Who was there to blame?
In any case, Dang Muyeong and the monster once known as Simta plunged together through the enormous hole.
Half a day had passed since the two of them — ankle locked in tentacle — had dropped toward somewhere far, far below.
The warriors of the Beast Palace, finding the jungle suspiciously quiet after so long, had crept out to take a look for themselves...
"Kehak..."
"Fall back. I'll check it out and come back..."
The toxic miasma hung so thick that the men he'd brought along were doubled over hacking their lungs out, so Maeng Sik carried on alone toward the source of the trouble.
Warriors of the Southern Barbarian Lands they might be in name, but the sorry lot couldn't have pushed inside to save their lives; the poison had eaten into everything around so thoroughly that merely drawing near set them off.
"Hrk... now then, let's see..."
Coughing drily himself, Maeng Sik headed for the spot where the monster had stood — and found everything around it scorched flat, nothing left behind but a colossal hole.
Which could only mean the two monsters had obliterated each other.
The instant the sight registered, he went tearing back out and hollered at the others.
"Hey! It's over! It's over!!!"
"What do you mean, over..."
"They must've killed each other off fighting! It's finally all done!"
And yet here was a man who counted among the Beast Palace's ten finest, bouncing up and down without a shred of dignity...
"Really...? WAAAAH!!!"
Like leader, like men — the followers who'd tagged along went bounding in circles, savoring the joy to its fullest.
They could hardly keep such wonderful news to themselves, now could they?
The scouting team sprinted back to the palace and reported everything that had happened to the Palace Lord...
"Haah... Good. Still, just in case — once the poison has thinned out a little, have that hole filled in."
"Palace Lord, sir, about that... the pit is, er, rather on the large side..."
"Filled it must be all the same. What if we left it sitting there and one of those two came crawling back out? Why would you even say something so irresponsible?"
"Th... then must I go and help fill it as well?"
"Or shall I, the Palace Lord, go fill it with my own two hands?"
"No, sir..."
In place of praise for their labors, all they received was an order to bury that vast pit.
Pit, they called it. The thing was bigger than the very grounds the Beast Palace stood on — how, exactly, was a handful of men supposed to fill that in?
Not that they could grab the Palace Lord by the collar and pummel him for it. He was the Palace Lord, after all.
And so Maeng Sik stormed out of the Palace Lord's office through clenched teeth, praying with everything he had that the poison would take its sweet time draining away.
KWAAAAAM-
With a colossal roar, I was smashed flat into the dark floor below.
It could seize my leg well enough — but a cushion was too much to ask?
Hit that hard, I could barely cling to my swimming consciousness; all I could do was roll my eyes about and take stock of my surroundings...
Vmmm-
The thing must have wrung out the very last of its strength to snatch my ankle, for it soon drained of all color and began to melt away.
"I... won..."
Watching the monster's end through slowly sinking eyelids — the creature had probably cracked an entire world to pieces on its own — I blacked out then and there.
And so, on the floor of that dark cavern, there remained only a black-haired young man, a giant jellyfish losing its shape by the second, and the pale, watery fluid dribbling out of it.
SPLASH-
Something cold splattered across my face.
"Ugh, dammit..."
"Oi! Wake up!"
I cracked my eyes open in a towering temper, and there was the face of some hairy ape of a man who looked like I'd seen him somewhere before.
"The auction's about to begin — just how long do you plan on sleeping!"
"Auction? What auction..."
Somehow dragging my still dream-fogged mind awake, I looked around...
"And what the hell is this now..."
Every which way I looked: prison cells of iron bars, people locked inside them — and, wouldn't you know it, an iron chain hanging from my neck.
I'll have you know my tastes run strictly to the giving of beatings, never the receiving.
Just as I was about to pitch a proper fit at this utterly incomprehensible scenery—
"Bring up number forty-one."
"At once, sir."
Clank-
The chain hauled taut and my body crumpled forward, boneless.
"Quit dawdling and get out here, damn you!"
The man barked at me, hauling on the chain over and over with those iron-corded hands.
"Huh...?"
At the sheer absurdity of it, I called up my power—
"What the—? What's wrong with this thing?"
Above that small, pale hand, absolutely nothing appeared.
While I stood there floundering, the man clamped a hand on my shoulder and, breathing his foul breath all over me, said,
"Kid, word is the one buying you today is a rather famous lover of boys. Better give it your best squeeze, eh? Heh heh heh..."
The words were barely out of his mouth before I swung my fist at the bastard's skull...
Thud-
A pitifully flimsy little thump — and nothing but laughter in reply.
"Kheh heh heh... You're up on the block today, so I'll let that one slide. If you're itching for revenge, why not work hard at your boy-toy duties and try becoming that fat bastard's darling."
Ah... now I get it.
For a moment there I wondered if I'd gone insane, but with my head finally starting to turn again, I roughly pieced together what was happening.
Apparently grabbing my ankle at the end hadn't been enough for that jellyfish bastard — it had to pull one last petty stunt on the way out...
WHAM-
"Ogh... ogh..."
I put my whole hip into a kick straight to the crotch of that walking case of halitosis, then bolted headlong for the auction floor.
Caught square by the surprise attack, the man folded in half around his legs and crumpled with remarkable docility — not that I cared.
Judging by that face, he wasn't getting any use out of them anyway. I'd simply tell myself it was preventive surgery against testicular cancer.
Shoving through the great curtain, I stepped out into light so bright it stung—
"Ta-daaa!"
I made my entrance with both arms flung wide, then followed up with an exquisitely aristocratic bow.
The participants of this demented auction were briefly struck dumb — but none of this was reality anyway, so what was a little going-off-the-rails between friends?
I'd watched the jellyfish bastard die with my own two eyes, which meant this cheap little stage play would fall apart soon enough.
Or if nothing else, once my body regenerated on its own, a mental technique of this caliber would unravel on its own too.
Either way, everything resolved itself if you just waited it out — so in the meantime, why not have some fun being a lunatic?
The master of ceremonies gawked at my display for a beat before pulling himself back together with professional polish and launching into the introduction...
"Lot forty-one! A pureblood human child, freshly turned ten, and it appears some grounding in etiquette has been managed as well! We shall open the bidding at one gold!"
Here was a fact I had genuinely, completely forgotten: apparently the starting price on my hide was one whole gold.
"You've got to be... shit."
To think my market value was the loose change noble lords flicked at restaurant staff as a tip...
And so the auction began.
"Ten gold!"
"Thirty gold!"
"Thirty-five gold!"
Call it the effect of my little exhibition, but the bidding started climbing faster than I'd expected.
"One hundred gold!!!"
Not that it would change the outcome — that fat bastard was going to be the one to buy me either way.
"One hundred gold, do I hear! If there are no higher calls before the third strike, the lot sells as it stands!"
A creature so buried under rolls upon rolls of fat that man and rolling boulder had long since become indistinguishable.
Bang-
Yet a duke he was — flush with coin, and spending it, as it happened, on hoarding up young boys.
Bang-
Look at him again and the sheer majesty of the man was, honestly, something to behold...
"One hundred fifty gold."
"Eh?"
Confronted with a turn of events that didn't match my memories, I stared slack-jawed at the person who'd made the call.
"Wasn't she... the Empire's imperial princess?"
The princess who would one day reign over the Empire as its sovereign was looking down at me from on high with imperious eyes, appraising me like a racehorse at market.
For one thing, in my memory this woman wasn't even at this auction — and yet here she was, legs crossed in lofty grandeur, coolly raising the price. What in the hell was this supposed to be?
Don't tell me that on some subconscious level, I was yearning to be a slave to a queen like that.....
SLAP-
"Snap out of it, you idiot!"
I smacked my own cheeks with both hands and spat the words at myself.
There was not one chance in hell I had a taste for that.
This was, beyond any doubt, the jellyfish bastard's last insidious scheme.
And so, while I spent a good long while beating my own face in, the bidding climbed ever higher...
"Three hundred!"
"Three fifty."
"Four hundred!"
"Four fifty."
"Five hundred!"
When the pig wheezed his way up to five hundred, I sneaked a glance at the princess through the gaps in my fingers.
But the princess called no further bids...
Bang-Bang-Bang-
"Sold! Five hundred gold!!!"
"Oh, come on... fuck....."
Knocked down, in the end, to His Rotundness.
Figures.
Unlike yesterday's crimson storm cloud, a genuine raincloud rolled over the Beast Palace, wrung out one good downpour, and drifted on — and the moment it left, the palace's warriors gathered en masse in front of the great hole, shovels in hand.
Regrettably, the toxic energy hadn't fully dissipated, so the low-ranking grunts who ought to have been handling this kind of grunt work couldn't show their faces at all...
"Aigoo... never imagined I'd live to see this age doing work like this."
"Maeng Sik, you take the first shift. If it wears you down, we'll rotate."
The elder-ranked dignitaries of the Beast Palace stood at the ready, clutching shovels of rather shoddy make.
And so Maeng Sik, suddenly demoted to the baby of the group, grumbled and muttered under his breath as he ferried dirt, stones, and fallen trees from far across the way.