Chapter 1239: Gravity Mageweath
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Grand Duke Vidi had initially thought that the magic scroll probably wouldn’t be put up for auction, even if its level had been verified after the appraisal. After all, the Heart of All Evil had already created a miracle in the history of auctions. However, after reading the appraisal report, Grand Duke Vidi nevertheless brought the item over despite being full of disbelief.
As opposed to the commotion that most of the people had gotten into, there was a completely different scene in the private room of the Octopus Clan. The person who was taking part in the bidding was Harquess of the Octopus Clan. When he heard that the next auction item was created by Lin Li, who was also known as President Felic of the Tower of Dusk, Harquess immediately recalled the evaluation that his father and the Grand Elder had made about Lin Li previously.
Has that human mage’s attainments in inscription really reached the level that the Grand Elder mentioned? Although Harquess refused to believe it, he didn’t dare to doubt the judgment of the Grand Elder and his father. Hence, he had developed quite a great interest in that auction item. After all, Lin Li had merely added a mageweath to the one that Harquess had drawn previously, but his elders were already very impressed. Now that this item was created by Lin Li, Harquess reckoned that it should be enough to display Lin Li’s level of attainments in inscription.
“Felic, the hosts of this auction seem to have quite a good judgment as they know how valuable your scroll is.” Connoris wasn’t surprised at all that Lin Li’s magic scroll was brought to the stage after the Heart of All Evil. Others might not know how capable Lin Li was, but Connoris had been Lin Li’s subordinate for such a long time. Of course he knew how competent Lin Li was.
Lin Li smiled nonchalantly. His magic scroll was put up for auction only because it was a request made by the Gilded Kingdom, and he was doing Bradlor a favor. Lin Li didn’t actually care about how much the magic scroll would be sold for. The person who managed to buy it would be considered lucky, but even if no one bought it, Lin Li wouldn’t find it a pity.
However, Bradlor didn’t know what Lin Li’s attitude was. Besides, even if he did, he definitely wouldn’t allow the auction item to go unsold. If the mageweath hadn’t been presented on the stage for the auction, he would’ve let it go since the Gilded Kingdom had already expressed their goodwill to Lin Li by putting up Heldanos’ painting for auction.
However, since the magic scroll had been brought to the stage for auction, Bradlor could only think of a way to give the scroll a decent and acceptable transaction price according to his initial plan. Of course, that wasn’t a big deal to him, the king of a kingdom, because it was just a matter of spending some gold coins. What really worried him was whether the reactions of those people in the hall would make Lin Li feel awkward.
“Everyone, everyone, please be quiet, please be quiet!” Grand Duke Vidi exclaimed, unable to maintain his composure because of the chatter and commotion going on below the stage.
Fortunately, Grand Duke Vidi’s words still carried some weight. After the discussion, the people at the auction were interested to hear Grand Duke Vidi’s explanation as to why exactly the scroll would be put up for auction at this juncture. Hence, they gradually quieted down, and looked at Grand Duke Vidi, who was on the stage, with peculiar gazes.
Grand Duke Vidi could sense the meaning in their gazes, but after taking a look at the magic scroll, he bit the bullet and picked it up.
Holding the mageweath scroll in hand, Grand Duke Vidi rehearsed his lines in his head before saying to the audience below the stage, “I will not tell you the level of this scroll for now…”
According to customary practices, he was supposed to first introduce the magic scroll’s level, which could be superior-level, Master-level, or even Guru-level. However, when Grand Duke Vidi was about to do so, he suddenly remembered that the level of the scroll had yet to be determined after the appraisal. Hence, he had no choice but to pretend to keep them in suspense.
However, the audience below the stage weren’t convinced by his trick. They wouldn’t mind being kept in suspense if it was some mysterious item, but there was nothing mysterious about a mageweath scroll as there were only just a few levels that the scroll could be at.
Besides, this magic scroll was created by a human mage who was only in his early twenties. They would never believe that the young mage would be able to create an impressive mageweath scroll. In their opinion, Grand Duke Vidi was being ridiculous by keeping them in suspense.
“Grand Duke Vidi, could it be that the magic scroll you’re holding is only at the apprentice-level?” someone immediately exclaimed while guffawing loudly.
“Yes, it indeed isn’t easy to see an apprentice-level magic scroll at such an auction. Haha!” Immediately afterwards, many people joined in the clamoring.
Hearing the noisy commotion from below, Grand Duke Vidi immediately looked embarrassed and awkward, but he had no choice except to pretend like he didn’t hear it. He loudly continued, “Next, I’ll be showcasing the power of this mageweath. I believe you will all come to a judgment after you see it.”
“What else is there to showcase? Just start the auction now! I’ll offer one gold coin!”
The one who made such a disrespectful comment was none other than Grina, who was boiling with fury because he had suffered plenty of losses caused by Lin Li. First, it was the Dark Gold Magic Dragon Armor that Lin Li had snatched away from him, which was followed by the Heart of All Evil that he was bent on acquiring, but somehow failed to do so because of Lin Li again. He now bore a strong grudge against Lin Li.
Grina had decided not to compete further with Lin Li for the Dark Gold Magic Dragon Armor, because he’d wanted to save his gold coins for the Heart of All Evil, which he regarded as his most important goal at the auction. However, he didn’t expect to end up failing to get his hands on the Heart of All Evil too, thus leaving him with nothing but a massive bunch of gold coins.
Grina, the prince of the Giant Shark Clan, had never suffered such a huge loss before, and he was already doing the Gilded Kingdom a favor by not taking the Four Divine Generals with him to settle the scores with Lin Li. Now that Lin Li’s magic scroll had appeared at the auction, he couldn’t contain his anger.
After Grina took the lead, the rest of the people naturally didn’t have any more scruples as they began placing their bids like Grina did, increasing the price by one gold coin at a time. They even made a huge ruckus, as if the bidding was intense.
Seeing such a scene, there was nothing else Grand Duke Vidi could say. He had no choice but to untie the string around the scroll, and slowly unroll the scroll according to the appraisal report.
In fact, Grand Duke Vidi felt that he could have just unrolled the scroll in one go because there was a powerful defensive Magic Array on the stage to act as a barrier. Even a Master-level magic scroll would not cause any damage to the auction hall, let alone Lin Li’s scroll.
However, while thinking about the contents of the appraisal report, Grand Duke Vidi couldn’t help but slow down in the unrolling despite doubting the truth of the matter. He stopped unrolling the scroll when a two-finger width section of the scroll was revealed. As the scroll was unrolled, a dense force was emitted from the scroll, and immediately shrouded everyone in the auction hall.
The people in the hall were initially still clamoring and raising the bid price by one gold coin at a time, completely ignoring the situation on the stage. However, they suddenly felt a strong force being imposed on their bodies out of nowhere. That caused the rowdy crowd to quiet down all of a sudden.
However, the quietness did not last for long, and immediately afterwards, they became even louder. In comparison, those from the smaller forces did not behave too outrageously, and were merely venting their displeasure. Those who didn’t care much about Grand Duke Vidi’s identity began questioning him and doubting the fairness of the auction. There were some who even questioned Grand Duke Vidi’s character, and got the Gilded Kingdom’s reputation involved.
“I thought it was something impressive, turns out it’s just a Gravity Mageweath. How dare they put such a low-level mageweath that even an inscription apprentice wouldn’t bother creating up for auction?!” Feeling the power on the magic scroll, Grina’s derisive laughter got even louder.
Gravity Mageweath! In fact, almost everyone thought of the same thing after they sensed the dense force that was being put on their bodies. It could be seen from their reactions that the Gravity Mageweath was not something profound. Not to mention professional inscribers, even those who had very little understanding of inscription knew what the Gravity Mageweath was.
The Gravity Mageweath had a simple function, and that was to add a greater gravitational force which was akin to tying a large pile of iron to a person. Hence, many warriors would use such a method for strength training.
In addition, opening a Gravity Mageweath scroll during a battle would cause some impact on the enemy’s actions, though it wouldn’t be too major. After all, warriors had probably gotten used to moving with additional gravitational force. On the other hand, the spell casting of mages wouldn’t get affected by gravity. Hence, regardless of which aspect it was, the uses for the Gravity Mageweath were very limited.
Strictly speaking, there were no specific or distinct levels for Gravity Mageweaths, which even inscription apprentices could create. However, as the ability of the inscriber increased, the power of the Gravity Mageweath would also be improved to a certain extent.
However, the increase wouldn’t be too great. For example, the power of a Gravity Mageweath drawn by a Master-level inscriber would probably be about the same level as a high-level mageweath. Hence, inscribers generally wouldn’t spend their energy on Gravity Mageweaths.
Based on the dense force, everyone guessed that the magic scroll in Grand Duke Vidi’s hand was only a low-level Gravity Mageweath, and thus they were even more disdainful. To them, it was worse than a Master-level mageweath! Everyone was extremely dissatisfied with Grand Duke Vidi for putting this lousy, garbage-like magic scroll up for auction.
“Grand Duke Vidi, you must be kidding. You’re going overboard with the joke, and we don’t have all the time in the world to play this game with you.” After determining that the magic scroll was a Gravity Mageweath, everyone in the auction hall stood up and prepared to leave. Those who qualified to attend the auction were all prestigious figures of status in the Endless Ocean, and there was nothing worth rejoicing about being pranked like this.
If it was just a harmless joke, they would just laugh it off, but they found Grand Duke Vidi’s decision to bring such a lousy mageweath, or so they thought, onto the stage for auction to be an insult to them. Even though they didn’t think that Grand Duke Vidi really had the guts to offend so many people, they didn’t want to continue entertaining his joke.
In particular, Grina, who hated Lin Li for sabotaging his auction plans, also resented Grand Duke Vidi. He remembered the answer that the Gilded Kingdom had given him after he got into a conflict with the Tower of Dusk previously. After the failure he encountered during this auction, and seeing the Gilded Kingdom’s attitude and stand, he naturally thought that the Gilded Kingdom and the Tower of Dusk had to be in cahoots.
However, Grina didn’t clamor about leaving the auction like the others. In his opinion, the Gilded Kingdom had put on this act obviously because they were trying to get closer to the Tower of Dusk. If he left just like that, it would be doing them a favor.
Hence, when everyone was kicking up a fuss, and claiming that they were about to leave, Grina stood in front of the window of the private room with almost half of his body leaning outwards. He yelled, “Everyone, please be quiet, I believe that Grand Duke Vidi will give us a satisfactory answer for this matter. Otherwise, we’ll have every reason to doubt the fairness of this auction!”
As the prince of the Giant Shark Clan, Grina was clearly not brainless. He tried to take the opportunity to blow things up. If the fairness of the auction was doubted by everyone, the items that had been auctioned off previously would have to be put up for auction again. During the buffer period, Grina would be able to make better preparations for a counterattack.
Grina’s words made the faces of Bradlor and Monterey, who were in the royal private room, turn incredibly sullen. This auction was not only held in the Gilded Kingdom, but also hosted by the Gilded Kingdom. Grina’s act of questioning the fairness of the auction was tantamount to questioning the credibility of the Gilded Kingdom.
However, Bradlor couldn’t air his grievances regarding this matter, because at the end of the day, he was the one who’d caused it all. If he hadn’t tried to use the auction to forge some friendly ties with Lin Li, he wouldn’t have asked the latter to put his scroll up for auction. If he hadn’t sent Monterey to persuade Grand Duke Vidi, the scroll wouldn’t have been put up for auction on the stage, either.