Chapter 77: DD3 Chapter 23 – The Grand Auction

“I don’t know what an Ossaman’s bifurcated centrifuge is,” Eliza tapped slowly.

“Of course, she doesn't! She’s a bard, Alph. I told you to use smaller words. You need to dumb it down into something her tiny brain can understand,” Everine hissed.

“I—I apologise about him. He’s not normally so rude. I think our cell is getting to him,” Alph hastily apologised.

“I’m fine. It’s not like we were exactly big fans of daylight before we were imprisoned. I have always been exactly this rude. It’s why we don’t have any friends—”

“We have friends!” the alchemist protested and Eliza could almost hear the snake roll his eyes in response.

“Don’t lie, you’re bad at it,” Everine chastised. “Also in case you forgot, we’re the same person, so Alph thinks you’re an idiot too.” 

“Right…” Eliza was unsure how to respond to that. 

She had been locked in the same small room without reprieve for days now and while the pair in the neighbouring cell had provided invaluable suggestions to help her test the limits of her magic, she was growing increasingly concerned that they were both completely insane. If they had cracked, she couldn’t blame them. Despite the snake’s nonchalance, the lack of sunlight, exercise, and human interaction was torturous. It was even getting to her and she’d known what she was getting into when she volunteered for this. 

Except for their daily buckets—one for food and the other for waste—their prison had nothing in the way of entertainment or stimulation. The boredom was mindnumbing and in those long moments when she couldn’t muster the energy to practise her magic or send messages through the wall, she felt it eating away at her sanity. 

Alph and Everine had endured weeks of this isolation and it hadn’t left them unscathed. There was a fragile edge to their voices, one that only started to fade after they’d been talking for a while and was always quick to return whenever Eliza went silent for too long. After taking all of their help, she felt like she owed them conversation—and she was certain that if she stopped tapping on the wall, what was left of their sanity would fray even further. It was a noble piece of charity that ultimately benefited all three of them, although engaging the pair in long conversations that stretched into the night would have been considerably easier if Everine wasn’t such an insufferable asshole. 

Most of the time he claimed to be a literal snake, but Everine was always quick to point out that he was nothing more than a very loud fragment of Alph’s dysfunctional personality—usually, when he wanted to avoid the blame for an insult he’d just hurled at Eliza. His erratic behaviour and suddenly shifting tone made the alleged secrets that passed through their shared wall harder to believe. If it wasn’t for Alph’s repeated assurances that it was all true she’d have discounted the snake’s words as the lies studded with passive-aggressive jibes that she hoped they were.

The rumours of what went on within the Royal Alchemist Guild’s Stables had always been far-fetched, but listening to actual gossip from a stranger who claimed to have been a recent member of that secretive profession blew most of what she’d heard out of the water.

She didn’t want to believe him. Calling Alph and his snake deranged liars so that she could continue to bury her head in the sand was a deeply appealing prospect, but after all that she’d seen his wild claims had the unfortunate ring of truth to them. So rather than call his talk of captive dragons and unnatural experiments going on in the heart of Helion the obvious insanity that they were, Eliza switched her hands and tapped a rhythmic beat on the wall yet again.

“Use your little words and explain it to me from the top,” Eliza asked.

There was a long pause.

“Okay,” the alchemist eventually answered, a note of relief in his brittle voice. “Almost a year ago, the Guild came into the possession of a hand from the ruins of some nobleman’s estate. Except it's not a real hand, it's a facsimile composed of condensed mana arranged in a way that is fundamentally antithetical to System magic as we know it.”

“Those aren’t small words, Alph,” the snake interrupted.

“It’s fine. Go on,” Eliza urged.

“As I was saying… The hand isn’t flesh and blood, it looks like it, but it's more accurate to describe it as part of a golem made from pure mana.”

“A golem? Do you mean like the Epherian Titans?”

“I have no idea how a Titan really works, but in theory, I suppose so. So yes, but instead of mana-infused stone and steel, we’re talking about one hundred per cent pure condensed mana. Like if you made a person out of mana bolts and then persuaded it to grow skin. Except that's not it at all.”

“Uhuh…”

“You’ve already lost her, Alph,” Everine jibed.

“Fine… Don’t worry about what it's made of, you wouldn’t understand. What’s important is that it reacts negatively to any skill used on it and that it steadily degrades without a constant supply of unaspected mana. When we took samples and experimented with them, we found two equally impossible things. The first is that despite its incompatibility with our skills, it has a permanent enhancing effect when used as a catalyst in augmentation potions.” Alph continued excitedly.

“And the second?” Eliza asked.

“With an increased supply of mana, the hand regenerates from any damage dealt to it allowing us to ‘harvest and heal’ in a roundabout way.”

“Harvest and heal?”

“Apologies. It’s an old alchemist term. It means that we cut what we want from it, heal it up and do it all over again. So far that original sample has yielded a few hundred pounds of flesh—probably more now, they weren’t exactly slowing down when I left.”

“Ignoring how abhorrent it is that you do that to people, what kind of an effect are we talking about?”

“I personally only experimented on goblins!” the alchemist quickly protested.

“Yes. They’re easy to physically overpower and taste delicious. We very much enjoyed sampling their many, many unnecessary corpses,” Everine added, causing Alph to utter a stream of obscenities at his familiar.

“We can discuss your conscience later. Just answer the question, Alph. How big of a boost are we talking about?” Eliza insisted.

“In addition to providing a significant boost to HP regeneration, exposure to a solution derived from the hand seems to add approximately 80 stat points to every attribute. There is some slight variation to that and the mental stats are always hard to measure accurately, but it seems to be consistent across several species. 

“With the exception of the additional trait, those who’ve experienced it for themselves claim to have a normal status, but the nature of that trait makes self-reporting inherently… complicated.”

“Because the tainted can’t be trusted.”

“Quite. The System notifications all but declares them as its enemies and explicitly grants additional experience to incentivise their destruction. If there were other concerning details, I would be unsurprised if they were omitted.”

“And experimenting with something so forbidden was enough to get you to switch camps?” Eliza asked.

Alph sighed.

“Everine raised several compelling points that I was initially reluctant to acknowledge. I fear that the allure of an effective 80 points to vitality may have blinded my more aged superiors to the side effects of the treatment. I suspect that despite its unproven nature, a great many of them may have taken it themselves. I can’t think of any other reason why they would ignore the behavioural side effects and push on with the project with so much fervour. When I left there was talk of large scale production and increased weaponization.

“I only wanted to talk to the dragon, her missives raised several concerning points and I fear that the hand might have something to do with these humanoid Monsters she wrote about,” Alph finished.

“It does sound familiar.” Eliza conceded, her missing fear making its absence known as every emotion fled her at once. She felt unnaturally cold even if her flesh remained physically warm and responsive. 

The alchemist’s dire warnings had been concerning, not just for the threat that was hidden away within Helion’s inner walls, but also because of the many similarities between herself and the tainted knights he had worked on.

Like them, she could no longer level. Unlike every other soul in Rhelea, Eliza hadn’t received a drop of experience from the Monster’s death. She had changed in that city. She had thought it was Riyoul’s death that had set her free, that maybe she’d overdosed on fear, but now just thinking it sounded silly. 

Eliza had killed people with classes and hadn’t seen so much as a single notification from the System. Something was wrong with her class and it was naive to think that it wouldn’t affect her as well. She was undeniably stronger now than she had been in the past—80 points of strength stronger? Maybe not, but her body was changing and her new source of magic had to come from somewhere.

Could she be tainted too?

She wanted to say no, that it was impossible that out of all the people to have been bathed in the blood of the Monster’s horrors, that she alone had been infected, but that thought only prompted the response that she might not be the only one. Eliza consoled herself that there was no new trait on her status and that she’d yet to feel a hankering for widespread death and destruction, but there were changes to her personality that went deeper than just her missing sense of fear. 

The thought of Xan’s hands on the back of her neck sent a shiver down her spine. She tried not to think about those calculating grey eyes looking down at her as she finally suppressed that shiver. That was a decidedly new development that felt far more significant than the thrill of the hunt she’d felt dodging gang members in dark warehouses throughout Helion.

How much of that was the old Eliza resurfacing now that she was free from her abuser? How much of it could be attributed to the damage done to her class? And what if that damage was the Monster’s taint running through her?

Would she suffer the same fate?

The ache in her chest from her recent practice throbbed and for a moment she could imagine tentacles and eyes ripping their way out from beneath her skin. Maybe the alchemist’s dire predictions weren’t the harmless distraction she’d thought they’d be. He sounded a lot less like a mad man when he was explaining his work rather than bickering with his pet snake. 

Eliza heard steps and jangling chains making their way down the hall. From the combination of boots and bare feet she quickly deduced that it was a team of guards escorting prisoners. The bard tapped a short warning and a promise to Alph before getting up from her bed to stand in front of her door. 

Her cell was subtly different now, and she didn’t want to give her guards any cause to investigate the changes. 

Five gruff looking men opened the door. Four high-pewter warriors led by a low bronze ranger. Stern expressions covered their faces when they dared to meet her gaze—something that happened far more than she’d anticipated given that they intended to sell her to a murderer. Eliza didn’t envy whatever mental gymnastics allowed them to justify their positions, but large sums of gold always had a way of corrupting even the best people and successful adventurers were rarely that. 

Without a word beyond “Get out,” they shackled her. Thick bands of rune-etched iron were placed securely around her neck and wrists only for long chains to be threaded through each shackle tying her to the other prisoners. She only had a moment to look at them before they were shuffling forwards again and what she saw was depressingly predictable. A group of mid to high pewter ranks with downcast and fearful eyes. Their formerly white shifts were stained an unpleasant mixture of black, brown, and grey, and The stench was best left undescribed. 

Their group shuffled along the hall for a couple of halting steps until they reached Alph’s cell. The door swung outwards and the smell was suddenly much worse.

“Out,” the bronze-rank barked.

In her head, Eliza had always pictured the alchemist as a reedy and bookish. She wasn’t entirely wrong, but it was clear from the outset that captivity had not been kind to him. There was a visible frailty to the man that overshadowed everything else as the alchemist slowly emerged from his cell on trembling legs. 

He was young, although a large part of his apparent youth was likely due to his forty-eight levels stymieing the ageing process. Together, the combination of his emaciated frame and oily skin made him look more like an adolescent than the thirty-something she knew him to be. His eyes were deeply sunken and there was an erratic look of desperation within them that conflicted strongly with the serene sense of calm that Eliza felt.

It took her an embarrassingly long time to realise that his panicked behaviour was entirely appropriate for someone who’d been captured by the Experience Merchants. It was her who was the weird one. She was certain that if everything went wrong, Xan would save her and that belief set her apart from every other prisoner—from the looks she was getting, it was not a subtle difference.

She decided then and there to make an effort to feign a degree of distress.

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As Alph cautiously stepped out from his cell, Everine made a surprise appearance from the neck of the alchemist’s filthy shift and prompted a bout of impassioned swearing from the guards. 

The snake couldn’t have been more than fifteen inches long and was a pale green colour that reminded Eliza of fresh grass. Other than that, he looked like an ordinary grass snake.

“Gentlemen please, how about we talk about this—” Everine spluttered.

“Oh not this asshole again,” one of the guards groaned, while another drew a long knife from their belt with exaggerated slowness.

“Please—please don’t hurt him!” the alchemist begged.

“Alph, let me handle this,” Everine urged. “Yes. It’s me again—the asshole snake. Now before you meatheads do anything unnecessarily stabby, please remember that I am functionally immortal so long as Alph has a drop of mana in his body. I am also barely venomous so please—”

A wet squelch interrupted Everine as he was neatly cut in half. Two pieces of snake fell from Alph’s shoulder which was completely unmarked. The alchemist grabbed at his midsection and screamed as if he’d been struck, while the snake’s remains disintegrated into motes of white light. The guard put away his knife—the blade was already clean—while the others lifted up the flailing alchemist from the floor and added irons to his wrists and neck.

The guards then resumed leading them through the bottom level of the complex where they added another five high-pewter classers to their number, bringing them to twenty-one in total. They were then ushered up a set of stairs—a truly challenging experience given the chains binding them together—and led to what looked like a stables. There, they had buckets of cold water thrown over them and were told to dress in fresh shifts. The enforced nudity was unpleasant, but Eliza had been through worse and the cold water running down her body was incentive enough to hurry. 

When they were done, roughspun gags and hoods were placed around their heads and her group was loaded into a covered wagon which eventually rolled out of the stables and into the crisp cool air of the night. They waited there in silence, they could hardly talk with tight wads of cotton in their mouths, but anyone who whimpered too loudly was struck by a guard. 

With her hearing, Eliza could make out the rough presence of other wagons that rolled into the stables empty, only to reemerge minutes later with shackled prisoners in the back. Once the convoy of wagons was loaded with its cargo, a driver pulled on the reins and horses began to pull them through the open streets of Helion.

Unfamiliar roads passed to the sound of her fellow captives’ quiet sobs. Eliza could hear the creak of wooden wheels spinning over the cobbles and the horses’ hoofs clip-clopping ahead of them, but with the bag over her head and her position constantly moving, her ability to hear everything seemed to be of limited value.

She made a passing attempt to keep track of the twists and turns that their route took them on, but it felt largely pointless and she soon gave up. Eliza knew that wherever they were taking her, Xan would be waiting. That thought made a comforting warmth blossom in her chest, but any potential pining was ruined by the ice-cold water that trickled down from her still-wet hair.

With all the despair around her, she struggled not to offer words—or taps—of reassurance to her fellow captives. Instead, she sat patiently in her seat and waited for time to pass while she was rocked side to side by the gentle movements of the wagon. It stopped numerous times along their winding route, either to avoid what sounded like the passage of a ratling patrol or more concerningly pausing to stop while a large purse of clinking coins was exchanged. 

When the wagons finally came to a stop for the last time they were quickly unloaded from the backs and led into another building. From behind the darkness of her scratchy hood, everything was anonymous, but she could hear the sounds of human activity practically vibrating through the walls of the structure.

Eliza had taken scarcely more than ten steps inside the building before the shackles around her wrists were removed and a thick salve was slathered onto her skin where they had rubbed against her. She was then separated from the rest of her group and escorted through cramped hallways and noisy rooms.

The bard was thrust into a large rectangular room where her guard left her and her hood was exchanged in favour of a wide-toothed comb running through her hair. It took several long seconds for her eyes to adjust to the brightness and when they did the bard found herself just one of many captives being properly dried, dressed and made-up in fine paints that far outclassed what she was used to wearing.

The people who worked on her were clearly professionals, even if they lacked the appropriate tags. They spared no time for chit-chat and were quick to strike those in other chairs who begged for help or wept enough to smudge their make-up. A perversely morbid part of Eliza’s psyche wished that they would talk to her—there was a nervous knot of anxiety in her stomach that was rising to meet the building storm of chaotic energy in her chest and the almost normal experience of chatting to a make-up-artist would have been greatly appreciated.

They stripped her. The violation made almost innocuous for all of its desexualised efficiency and she was hurried into a new dress that seemed like an entirely unnecessary step given the fate they believed she was destined for. Still, the fabric was fine and the bodice was sufficiently low-cut that Eliza might have chosen it for herself if the scenario were different. 

Suitably dressed, she was once again escorted by a different set of guards to wait behind what was obviously a stage.

A massive red curtain separated the captives under guard or in cages from the audience and the stage beyond. Eliza could hear the rapid-fire speech of the auctioneer as he led bidders up to a truly exorbitant price that she could only assume was attached to a person of a similarly high level. 

A hammer struck wood and the word ‘Sold!’ boomed out to muted applause. A person sobbed on stage to the uncaring chatter of the audience. The sounds that emerged from the stands were eerily familiar and her skills in interpreting them were aided by the truly excellent acoustics. 

There was a subdued raucousness in the air, the kind that could only be created when a large number of people are both sufficiently relaxed and plied with a significant amount of good drink. To a bard who was used to large crowds, the experience was frighteningly mundane—familiar yet abhorrent in all the wrong ways. 

She recognised several captives from her brief journey through the bowels of Westhorns Menagerie, but many more were completely unfamiliar. Some stood to the side in finery like her, those with comparatively high levels and noncombat tags, but elsewhere others milled about encrusted in dirt and worse. Those with lower levels, or who were of a different species seemed to have been treated significantly worse, with obvious signs of abuse decorating their bodies just as prominently as the higher levelled captives were tastefully painted to accentuate their good health. 

There was an entire cage crammed full of goblins below level ten, at least two dozen in a space that could comfortably hold a quarter of that. A mid-bronze warg was in the process of being shaved to better highlight its muscle definition while it strained futilely against its chains. Elsewhere, a line of heavily shackled warriors was stripped down to their undergarments and was in the process of being oiled by silent attendants. There was a mage in an almost comically long robe making arcane gestures while the runes on her iron collar shone brightly. Crafters were given props to match their stereotypical skills and Eliza half-expected to be given an instrument of her own. It was only when she looked down at her jutting cleavage that she realised that she’d already received hers.

The cage full of goblins quickly sold for the low price of ten drachma while the warg went for a full forty talents—a sum of gold that almost made Eliza go weak at the knees. The stripped-down warriors went for between a half and five talents each, whereas the mage went for thirty. Eliza didn’t initially understand why prices seemed to fluctuate so wildly between different classes, but as she listened to the auctioneer rattle off lists of captives' various traits, she belatedly realised that the Experience Merchants dealt in far more than just people to be murdered for coin.

They dealt in slaves too.

It was a disgusting revelation that Eliza really should have made earlier. Crafting classers had until very recently been under the strictest control of Terythia’s noble classes and their skills were a large part of how they’d held onto power for so long. Now that Typh had thrown out all of those rules, it would be relatively easy for anyone with wealth to explain away the presence of unnaturally loyal servants within their estates. While slavery was extremely illegal, indentured servitude wasn’t and the line between the two was blurry at the best of times.

Was the punishment worth the risk of owning high-level craftsmen? Apparently yes, it was, and judging by the prices being screamed down from the stands, some of the starting prices were a steal.

When it was her turn to be sold, Eliza didn’t fight the guards who came for her.

With burly arms, they escorted her to centre stage and it was there that she received yet another shock. Staring out from centre stage, Eliza looked into the stands and saw a hundred hungry gazes staring back at her. However, it wasn’t the quantity or the intensity of their lust that shocked her, it was the room. 

She was in Helion’s grand fucking orchestra house. Playing here was the unattainable dream of every bard in Terythia and these Experience Merchants were using it to sell people. 

The sin of the desecration was almost as bad as the method. For the first time since she’d consented to investigate this barbarity, Eliza felt her anger rise far above her disgust.

Her gaze swept out over the stands where barely dressed staff moved through rows of seats and private boxes. They carried silver trays offering drinks, drugs and fucking canapes to the human-shaped monsters relaxing in their seats. Eliza’s initial plan to stage an escape shattered in that moment. 

The captives would never be free so long as people like this still breathed. They were the rot that existed within Terythia. The old money that would rather see everyone else suffer rather than be temporarily inconvenienced.

And now they all had classes and the sheer arrogance to try and buy what they couldn’t be bothered to earn. How much worse would they be when they were iron ranked, centuries-old and enslaved by their classes’ urges? How many people would they buy, murder and exploit?

Eliza would have hated them even if they weren’t classers.

“And next up we have lot 85! A high-pewter bard with 42 levels to her name! Heavy on charisma and dexterity she has the physical attributes to serve more domestic roles in addition to her natural abilities for music! Incapable of speech due to a badly-healed injury she is incapable of divulging secrets, talking back, or complaining!” the auctioneer laughed. “We’ll start the bidding at thirty gold talents!”

“thirty-five!”

“forty!”

“fifty!”

“Be quiet!” 

The command left her lips with an accompanying wave of power. The deeply carved wards in her collar flared and shattered beneath the weight of her magic, and the room was suddenly plunged into silence. Eliza felt more than heard the classers within the crowd recover. The high-level individuals amongst them were like rocks on the shore and the wave of her chaotic intent broke against them where it drowned their lower levelled peers. 

Ripples of alarm rang out around those handfuls of individuals where her magic was weakened, the System thwarting her desires yet again as cries of panic steadily grew. Guards to the sides of the stage drew swords and advanced on her. People in the stands stood up to leave. A level thirty-eight warrior leaned forwards in her seat.

Eliza felt the chaotic power pulsate in her chest and not an ounce of fear. 

“Freeze!”

Another wave of magic raced out from her. Larger this time for all of her focus and rage. She felt more than saw the wards lining the walls of the room crumble taking large chunks of masonry with them. When the warriors to her sides with their mailed hands outstretched froze she felt more than just powerful.

She felt like a God.

Eliza looked at them and saw for the first time how their classes limited them. Weighing them down with urges that they could never hope to truly control whilst keeping the primal magic of Creation far away from their grasp. She almost felt pity for the classers, for so long as the System lived, they would never approach her majesty. 

Eliza smiled to herself and walked slowly to the edge of the stage. She looked around at the ceiling and the seats, ignoring the frozen humans trapped inside. She didn’t stare at the eyes wide with terror or acknowledge the cries for help from those few who could still speak. She let those who were capable flee as she pretended for a few joyous moments that they were her audience and that she had just played them a song.

If they’d given her a violin she might have attempted such a thing.

Instead, she went back to her experimentations with Alph. As much as she wanted to play she had finite reserves and simple instructions worked best. This time she was careful to project her voice, to spare those in the back. There were warriors there, and that would be challenging, but it wasn’t like she remembered what fear felt like.

“Kill yourself!” Eliza said and to her growing excitement, her captive audience obeyed.

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