His objective was simple, immediate, and singular: liquidation.
He stepped out of the private forge room, leaving the scent of triumph behind. A few players glanced his way, their eyes lingering on his gear. The simple, bleached-linen of the [Acolyte’s Circlet] was an odd sight in a forge, a place of soot and steel. It was gear for a scholar.
The mismatch drew looks, but Klaid registered their curiosity as nothing more than useless background data.
He walked with purpose, his worn boots silent on the stone flags. He accessed his inventory window while moving. The [Novice's Hardened Leather Gloves] were dragged from his bag, swapping places with the borrowed Artistry gloves.
The circlet and the second ring stayed. Their Artistry bonuses were now part of his baseline build. A necessary tax for his unique profession.
His path from Grak’s Forge to the Oakhaven Auction House was a straight line through the chaotic plaza. He cut through the crowds, his gaze fixed on the ornate building that served as the town’s economic heart. He ignored the hawkers, the guild recruiters, and the duel requests that flickered at the edge of his vision. They weren't part of the plan.
The Auction House was packed with players clustered around public terminals, their faces illuminated by streams of numbers and item icons.
He walked to a secluded alcove, where a glowing crystalline console awaited. The remote function he registered and paid for didn't include the possibility of posting items.
His fingers flew across the holographic interface.
Filter. Item Quality. He scrolled up. Unique.
The system processed his request for a half-second. The chaotic screen wiped clean, replaced by a single, stark line of text.
[No Results Found]
Kage’s expression didn't change, but a grim satisfaction settled in his gut. Just as he’d suspected. There were no other publicly listed Unique items. He was about to create a whole new segment of it. His [Traitor's Cage Pauldrons] wouldn't be competing with anything. They would be the benchmark. The first.
This changed his entire calculation. There was no price history, no comparable sales data. There was no reality to anchor his expectations to; his item was the new reality.
He began the listing process, his mind a whirlwind of psychological warfare and economic theory. The item icon for the pauldrons glowed in the listing window, pulsing with a faint, purple light that screamed its rarity.
First, the Starting Bid.
His initial thought was 10 gold, maybe 15. A high but accessible price. He dismissed it instantly. That was thinking like a seller. He needed to think like a predator. He was creating a feeding frenzy, and he would start by making the meal look exclusive.
He typed in 25 Gold.
The number sat there, bold and arrogant. It was a bouncer at the door of a VIP club. It was a velvet rope. It instantly disqualified casual bidders, low-level guilds, and anyone who wasn't absolutely serious. It was a signal to the server’s elite—the high-tier guilds, the silent whales who moved markets from the shadows—that this was their table.
Next, the Buyout Price.
The field was a tempting, dangerous blank. He could put 100 Gold. It would be an insane amount of money, a life-changing score.
But… a buyout price was a ceiling. It was an admission that you knew the item’s maximum value. He didn't. How much would a top-tier guild pay for a server-first, best-in-slot piece for their main tank? How much was the ego of a player like Argent worth when faced with the prospect of owning something no one else could?
He didn’t know. And that ignorance was his greatest asset. No buyout. Let them fight. Let their pride and their wallets do the talking.
Finally, the Duration.
He selected the shortest possible option: 16 Hours.
The intent was to apply pressure. It was a ticking clock. The auction would expire tomorrow evening, right in the middle of the server’s primetime. Everyone who mattered would be online. They would see the timer counting down, and the fear of missing out would do half his work for him.
And for him, it was a race against a much more important clock. His mother's hospital bill was due in 22 hours. Auction ends in 16. A tight window, but acceptable. The risk was manageable.
He stared at the completed listing one last time.
Item: [Traitor's Cage Pauldrons]
Quality: Unique
Starting Bid: 25 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Copper
Buyout Price: -
Duration: 16 Hours
Satisfied, he pressed the ‘Confirm’ button. It glowed, and a formal notification appeared.
[Auction for [Traitor's Cage Pauldrons] is now live!]
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
[A non-refundable listing fee of 75 Silver has been deducted from your account.]
After a few minutes, the world reacted. The global chat, usually a stream of nonsense, trade spam, and arguments, exploded after a dozen seconds.
[Global] ReaperOfSouls: Hooly shet, a unique on AH. The first ever posted?
[Global] SparkleQueen: 25g start?! I wonder who will have this amount of money! LF Sugardaddy >.<
[Global] SnackAttack: WTS salt and popcorn 2s! Pop a bag watching whales fight! DM Oakhaven AH!
[Global] DragonSlaya: Crimson is claiming these. Better bring deep pockets.
Kage’s lip curled slightly at the last message. The gamble had begun, and the first fish was already on the line.
With the auction live and the ripple effect spreading, the adrenaline that had fueled him since the forge finally, catastrophically, dissipated. It was as if a primary power source had been cut, leaving him running on low-yield emergency batteries.
A profound, bone-deep weariness settled over him. His mind felt thick, like wading through molasses. He had been jacked into Crown of Destiny for over twenty-six hours straight.
His physical body, sealed away in its capsule, was irrelevant. The machinery handled the messy realities of human biology with a cold, sterile efficiency. An integrated intravenous system fed a constant, calibrated stream of hydration and nutrient solution directly into his bloodstream. A sophisticated catheter and a micro-filtration waste reclamation system managed the outputs. In the context of the game, his body was just another component, an organic engine being professionally maintained by a superior piece of hardware.
But the capsule could not maintain his mind.
He felt the fatigue as a quantifiable degradation of performance. A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision in the crowded Auction House made him flinch, a full tenth of a second after his brain had already identified it as a non-threat. A complex train of thought—calculating potential auction profits against conversion rates and transfer fees—stalled twice before he could complete it.
Pushing further will result in diminishing returns and an unacceptable increase in the probability of critical error. The optimal strategy is to rest.
An old memory surfaced, unwelcome. Master Jin, after a grueling three-hour kendo practice. A younger Klaid, drenched in sweat and buzzing with nervous energy, had wanted to go again, to push past the burn. The old man had simply placed his hand on Klaid's shoulder, forcing him to sit.
"A tired mind makes a clumsy blade, Klaid," the memory of Jin’s voice echoed, raspy and patient. "The sharpest sword is useless if the mind that wields it has grown unsteady. Rest is not weakness. It is the sharpening of the stone."
The memory was an intrusion of useless philosophy into a problem of pure pragmatics, and it was infuriatingly correct.
The decision was made. He considered it a strategic retreat to conserve his most valuable asset: his mind.
One final task remained. A loose end in the code that required a manual patch.
Kage pulled up the external messaging interface. The translucent projection floated over the chaotic bustle of the Auction House, a square of sterile blue light against the rich, sensory overload of the game world.
[Contact selected: Elara]
His fingers hovered over the glinting keys. The muscle memory of the Operator kicked in, eager to file the report and close the ticket. He tapped out the sequence rapidly, efficiency guiding every stroke.
‘Objective complete. Funds incoming. ETA 24 hours.’
He stared at the words.
They were accurate. They were efficient. They were cold enough to freeze nitrogen.
A notification pulsed in the corner of his vision, a trailing wisp of silver filigree, the hallmark of his Synesthesia.
The memory of the forge hit him. Not the data—not the stat blocks or the durability ratings—but the heat. The narrative that he imposed. The plot twist on reality.
The sharpest sword is useless if the mind that wields it has grown unsteady.
Kage looked back at the drafted message. It was a lie. Not technically, the facts were true. It told Elara the math, but it didn't tell her the story.
He held the backspace key. The letters vanished, eaten one by one.
He started again. The keystrokes were slower this time, heavy with a friction that had nothing to do with Agility stats. He was fighting his own conditioning, the cynic’s reflex that insisted hope was just a pre-cursor to disappointment.
"Money is coming. It’s enough. Stop worrying about the bill."
He paused. His thumb hovered over the ‘Enter’ key. It still felt like a transaction.
He looked around the Auction House. To his altered vision, the noise of the crowd was a rhythmic percussion of greed and desperation. But under the noise, there was a steady bassline.
He typed two more words.
"We're safe."
The phrase sat there, terrifying in its absolute nature. Safe. It was a dangerous concept. In gaming, safety was a temporary state. In life... in life, it was a mythical rarity. By typing it, he was hard-coding a promise into the server log of reality.
He exhaled, a sharp hiss of air through his teeth. He felt nausea curl in his gut—visceral, raw fear of jinxing the auction. But he didn't delete it.
He added a postscript, almost as an afterthought, to ground the high-stakes sentiment in something mundane.
"Going to sleep."
[Message Sent.]
It was done. The signal packet was routed through the immersion pod, out to the local network, and into the handheld device of a girl who had spent the last few years holding her breath.
He closed the interface with a swipe of his hand.
"System," he said, his voice flat. "Logout."
[Initiating Neural Disconnect...]
The world tore.
The rich, saturated smell of coin-metal from the Auction House was scrubbed from his senses. The silver filigree of the Synesthesia interface withered and retracted, stripped away like dead vines. The rhythmic thump of the crowd’s movement ceased, replaced by a high-pitched electronic whine.
[3... 2... 1...]
Gravity returned with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Klaid gasped, his real eyes snapping open. The transition was always violent, a sudden shift from the fluid, vectorized movement of a game avatar to the heavy, biological reality of a human body that hadn't moved in twenty-six hours.
Detailed sensory data flooded in, ugly and unformatted.
The air in the apartment tasted of stale dust and the metallic tang of the immersion pod's recirculated coolant. It was freezing. The capsule’s climate control was set to 'Optimal Hardware Preservation,' which usually meant 'Human Hypothermia.'
He groaned, the sound scraping against a dry throat. His limbs felt leaden, weighed down by the crushing debuff of gravity. There was no Rhythmic Flow here to speed his movements. Just biology. Just atrophy.
He fumbled with the release, his fingers stiff and clumsy. The pneumatics hissed, and the canopy slid back.
Klaid rolled out of the pod, his feet hitting the cold laminate floor. His knees buckled immediately. He caught himself on the edge of the capsule, his knuckles turning white.
No blue box appeared. Just the dim, grey stillness of his spartan apartment. The nutrient IV line in his arm pulled taut. He ripped the tape off, wincing as the needle slid out. The taste of the nutrient paste, like chalk and cheap vitamins, coated his tongue.
He stumbled toward the bed, three feet away. It felt like a cross-country trek.
The sheets were cold, smelling of laundry detergent and neglect. He collapsed onto the mattress, not bothering to pull the blanket up. His body was a wreck, pulsing with the dull aches of prolonged immobility, but his mind was strangely quiet.
The strategic noise was gone. The market calculations, the cooldown timers, the rhyme schemes... silence.
He closed his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids was void of pixels.
We're safe.
The thought drifted through the fog of exhaustion, no longer a terrifying promise, but a simple, factual log entry.
Sleep took him like a system crash.
Immediate. Black. Offline.