Chapter 78 – Auction Part 1

Translator: SFBaka

Editor: Thor’s Stone

“Well then, we shall now begin today’s auction! I am the Gantz Commerce Guild Branch’s Silas. First, let me introduce the seller for this time’s auction. This is the A-rank adventurer and Clan Leader of Shining Star, Alan.”

Dammit! I didn’t hear anything about this. If I knew, then I would have worn clothes that were more presentable.

I stood up from my seat and made a bow to the crowd.

“Oh! So that’s Shining Star’s……”

“He’s quite young.”

“So that’s the one called the Bandit Hunter and Dragon Slayer.”

“Alan, please say a little something to today’s attendees.”

“……I am Shining Star’s Alan. I thank you all for participating in today’s auction. Well then, may you all have a fruitful afternoon.”

Even if you tell me to make a speech so suddenly, it’s not like there’s a lot I could say anyway.

Some of the merchants attending the auction began to clap. Before long, all of the merchants attending the auction stood up and gave me a shower of applause.

Applause on this planet corresponds to people signifying their praise and approval. I had no choice but to stand up again and bow to everyone in gratitude.

I wonder what everyone is actually applauding for. Well, I bet it’s for our work clearing out most of the bandits lurking around the surrounding areas.

When the applause subsided, Silas-san took a seat right next to us while Karina-san and the other guild staff replaced him on the stage.

“First, please have a look at today’s item, everyone. Here it is. This is the highly sought-after panacea.”

Karina-san held up a small bottle in front of the crowd.

“”Oooh!””

A guild staff standing next to Karina-san rolled up his sleeve and slashed the area above his elbow with a knife. I couldn’t see the wound clearly from my position, but since blood was dripping freely from the injury, it was probably a quite deep cut.

Karina-san opened the small bottle containing the panacea and poured a few drops onto a cloth. She then applied it to the wound. After a minute or so, the guild staff took the cloth off the wound.

“Oh!”

“Amazing!”

Since everyone seemed quite surprised, the wound should have probably healed.

Karina-san already showed us the effect of the panacea when we met up with her to talk about the auction arrangements yesterday. Of course, I didn’t miss touching the panacea substance with my finger in order to have Nanom analyze it before the auction.

It certainly did contain some rare components, but it’s not like any of them were particularly special. In fact, they were pretty common all over the empire.

The only unique thing about it is that it contained magical energy. The dragon’s blood already contains plenty of magic power, and mixing it with the other ingredients gives birth to a panacea with such effects.

Even Iris was stumped about why it could produce such effects, so we’ll have to devote some more effort to conduct thorough research on it in the future.

And it seems the panacea doesn’t spoil easily. By using a special stopper made of material produced from Slimes, it could apparently be stored away for several years.

The bottles used to store panacea had a capacity of 200 ml, and the number of panacea bottles we were able to produce this time was 2,350.

We decided to keep 200 bottles for use by the Clan and didn’t auction them off. In other words, the total number of panacea bottles we put up for auction was 2,150.

And in order to procure that many glass vials, the glassworks workshop in Gantz had to operate at full capacity for twenty days. And since the prices of raw materials necessary for producing glass have soared recently, they ended up recycling unneeded glass products into the glass vials we needed instead.

“The Gantz Commerce Guild Branch guarantees that all products which are going to be auctioned today are just as effective as the sample I’ve shown you all. Now then, let us proceed to the auction proper. As we’ve announced earlier, each company can only win bids a maximum of five times. The number of goods will differ per listing. The initial round of listings has a hundred panacea vials each, the second has fifty, the third has thirty, the fourth has twenty, and the fifth and final one will have ten.

I had no idea how to allocate the goods for the auction so I had Karina-san handle everything instead.

“Now then, let’s begin with a hundred vials of panacea. The price starts at 10,000 per vial. Please place your bids.”

“The Reel Company bids 40,000 Guineas!”

“The Boffmill Company bids 50,000.”

“The Tsuiril Company bids 60,000 Guineas!”

“Our Reel Company raises our bid to 75,000!”

“Karel Company bids 80,000 Guineas.”

Whoah! The price is going up at a crazy rate! Since it was 10,000 per vial initially, that meant the current highest bid right now will net a total of 8 million Guineas for all 100 vials. A small vial like that was now already going for 80,000 Guineas!? It looks like what Karina-san said about these panaceas being equal to national treasures wasn’t unwarranted.

“The Tarus Company bids 100,000.”

Oh! It’s Jonas-san! He actually raised the price to triple digits in one go! It instantly raised a commotion in the auction hall.

“Brass Company raises a bid of 105,000!”

It’s still going up. But the momentum was apparently slowing down already.

“Silas Company bids 120,000 Guineas.”

Whoah. That was Arista-san. After Arista-san placed her bid, I heard a number of merchants inside the venue click their tongues. Silas-san stood up from his seat, seemingly angry, and the tongue clicking subsided as a result.

“120,000 Guineas. Do I hear any more bids? None? ……Well then, here are a hundred vials of panacea. The Silas Company has one a hundred vials of panacea.”

The people inside the venue made a stir after the announcement.

“We shall proceed with the next session. It’s another hundred vials of panacea. Bidding starts at 10,000 Guineas per vial. Please go ahead.”

“Silas Company bids 120,000 Guineas.”

Arista-san declared her bid immediately. ……No other voice rang out after her own.

“……A hundred vials of panacea. Silas Company has won the bid for 12,000,000 Guineas.”

After repeating the exact same actions three times more, Arista-san finally stood up from her seat and left the venue. Hm. I guess this just goes to show how much of a difference there was between the other companies and Silas-san’s.

“Let us move on to the next session. Another hundred vials of panacea. The price starts at 10,000. Please place your bids.”

The price went up as usual, but strangely, the bidding did not stop even after the price reached 120,000 Guineas per vial.

“Tarus Company bids 140,000 Guineas.”

“…………A hundred vials of panacea. Tarus Company has one the bid for 14,000,000 Guineas.”

I see. The reason why the bids no longer rose after they hit the 120 thousand mark earlier was that nobody wanted to go against the Silas Company, which was said to be the largest and most influential mercantile company in this kingdom. They were probably afraid of the Silas Company bearing a grudge against them. Now I kinda get why a lot of them clicked their tongues earlier.

Afterward, the Tarus Company made a successful bid once again, but the price of the subsequent bids still continued to rise.

After a total of 1,500 vials were auctioned off, the products for sale changed to sets of fifty panacea vials, and the auction sessions became even more heated.

I see……… So the merchants without that much capital on hand had to wait until the listings with lower item numbers were put up on auction since they didn’t bring enough money for the hundred vial ones.

However, the number of rivals for the remaining products would conversely increase, and the bidding war would continuously escalate as more and more items were sold since they would fight over whatever was remaining. The price per vial for the fifty vial listings had risen to 175,000 Guineas before I knew it.

It seems the principle of the rich getting richer was the same no matter which planet you find yourself on.

The sessions finally ended after four hours, and the auction for the day officially came to a close. The final listing actually sold for a whopping 250,000 Guineas per vial. It was more than double that of the first winning bid.

To think those tiny vials would actually sell for 250,000 Guineas each. I wasn’t quite sure, but I didn’t think they would be able to make a profit reselling them after purchasing them at such a steep price.

The merchants were leaving the venue looking pretty tired out. I was just sitting around almost the whole time, but even I felt tired.

Their payments would be taken by the guild staff in exchange for the items they won at a later date.