City of Sin

Book 3, 128

Trade(2)

Nyris couldn’t hold back his excitement, an unusual flush rising up his cheeks that caused him to seem delicate. A quick calculation revealed that the revenue from processing all this maple amber was entirely enough to level out his current debt. He would actually be able to break out of his bankruptcy!

Richard then took out an intricate silver-lined case, pouring some mana within to cause it to float in the air. He then opened the lid and pushed it lightly, send it towards Nyris, “Here are the three Savage Barrier sets, the effects are even better than the two before. I’ll sell at a discounted price of three million.”

The two others didn’t care for the sets inside the case at all, eyes completely focused on the box itself. Gazing at it for a full minute, Nyris asked Agamemnon, “What did you find?”

“Image diamond, embedded by a dwarven grandmaster. Gravity isolation, spatial equipment... Hmm... The diamond can be activated further.”

Richard was surprised by Agamemnon’s skill at appraisal. The youth had basically seen through the case entirely. Richard had activated the image diamonds himself, but he didn’t have the skill or mana to use them completely; they were working at half of their capacity. The space inside the box was only one cubic metre in volume, and could only accommodate one tonne. Only when his level increased could he activate them further.

Nyris have Richard a long look, “I really have to reevaluate you. You actually managed to get two image diamonds and a dwarven grandmaster to embed them. Just the box is worth more than a million gold, and the three sets—”

“Take the sets. The box isn’t for you,” Richard bluntly interrupted the Prince’s fantasy. With his dreams destroyed, Nyris groaned.

Richard then opened another chest, the five epic-base weapons within causing the eyes of the two to light up. He ended up selling four to them in exchange for three enchantments on the two-handed axe, bringing it to full epic grade. Two of the three enchantments had to be Rip and Heavy Blow.

The excess money from this exchange was used for a magic item to increase his own strength. Agamemnon ended up trading him a magic necklace from the Ironblood Family that barely made it to the epic grade. Although its stored magic barrier was basically useless, the 10% increase in casting speed and spell damage was quite useful to him. Paired with the Twin of Destiny’s increase in damage and spell penetration, his killing power was greatly increased. Richard himself had a penetration rune, so everything stacked up would basically destroy any resistance his enemies had towards his spells.

As for the 400 obsidian weapons, Richard gave the two a hundred in exchange for enchantments on the rest. However, it would take at least one month for all of these weapons to be enchanted; that was almost an entire year in Faelor.

With the trade concluded, Nyris and Agamemnon hastily left. The value of this transaction was far too huge, so they needed to take their time with the arrangements lest they make careless mistakes.

......

Nyris remained taciturn as he and Agamemnon left the floating island. Before the two parted ways, however, Agamemnon suddenly spoke up, “Follow Richard to Faelor.”

The Prince jumped up like a frightened rabbit, shouting in reply, “What for?!”

“An investment.”

The curt reply only increased Nyris’ reaction, “Investment? Are you saying I can’t make money and feed my army myself? Why do I need Richard?”

“For points. You only have two years left,” Agamemnon stated dully.

Nyris was like a snake with its bones extracted, losing all the strength in his body. He had already lost the right to ask for temporary allowances, and his budget in the next year would not increase either. While this transaction had helped patch up the debt he had incurred, he was currently in a passive situation; without Richard, he didn’t know how to make up for the 200,000 gold he was going to lose next year. This was no small amount, pushing him several steps back. The other royal children wouldn’t sit by idly in this period of time, using the opportunity to turn this difference in wealth into power and using their strength to increase their points. In two years, there would be an important test. Those who lagged behind would lose their rights to inherit the throne of the alliance, the vacant spots filled by those princes and princesses who had newly become adults.

“But...” Nyris said somewhat timidly, “It feels like there’s no honour in it.”

“There’s even less honour in losing the throne.”

“Alright, I’ll think it over again.” The Prince had no choice but to yield, gloomily walking towards the imperial teleportation formation.

Agamemnon shook his head as he looked at the receding back, entering a portal himself.

......

Agamemnon’s men sent the necklace over in the evening. It was an elegant artefact with a massive azure gem on it, named the Heart of the Moon Goddess. The necklace had accrued a bit of fame, so it didn’t take much verification before Richard wore it right away. With how much he was focusing on his astral affinity, Richard didn’t worry about his mana growth in the future. However, potential did not equate to current strength. He was starting to place importance on equipment now; that would lead to a direct increase in power.

Night slowly fell on Faust, the city of miracles once again illuminated by the light of the moons. In the highest tower of the castle, Richard sat where Gaton used to and slowly entered deep meditation. His mind slowly went quiet, his body growing translucent to his soul as it revealed his awakening bloodline. The third branch of the astral trunk had already produced its first leaf, giving him a new ability: Deep Awareness. This allowed him to find high-grade astral rays nearby with more ease.

Motes of blue light began to appear all around him, large and small, slow and fast. Richard could now move his consciousness at will, slight ripples rocking his surroundings as though he was a large fish swimming in water. He couldn’t go too fast, and as he tried to capture the high-grade astral rays he had plenty of problems. The grade 3 rays weren’t just faster than him, but also appeared for a very short period of time. Even relying on calculating the trajectory and barring the path, his success rate still wasn’t high. However, Deep Awareness showed him the ripples caused by the movement of his consciousness, revealing exactly why it was so difficult to catch these rays.

Every time his consciousness approached a ray, the ripples produced by its movement changed the light’s trajectory. The higher the grade of astral ray, the quicker it was to be affected by the ripples. Richard thus changed his approach, racing to the predicted locations and then lying still to let the ripples fade. The experiment was a success; although a grade 3 ray hit the aftershocks, it didn’t escape his range.

This discovery immediately increased his success rate with high-grade astral rays, allowing him to pull them into his body one by one. Most of the rays merged into his astral affinity, while a small portion were turned into mana.

Time passed as he meditated, the branches and leaves of the astral bloodline growing lush with life. It seemed like the second leaf on the third branch would appear soon. The Archeron bloodline wasn’t lagging behind at all, the web-like veins emitting traces of volcanic heat that was burning hotter than ever before. His bloodline had been strengthened under the threat of the spirit lance in Zhubvar, creating a phantom demon to protect him. Ever since then, Richard felt like he was close to unlocking a third Archeron ability.

Just as the meditation session was about to end, a wisp of splendid seven-coloured mist suddenly appeared in his senses! Its existence was recorded in the Deepblue Fantasy, mentioning that it was a grade 5 astral ray that was called the rainbow mist and possessed wondrous strength. Even grand mages rarely ever found these things!

Richard was extremely lucky. His consciousness was right next to where the astral mist had spawned, so a slight movement and he grabbed hold of the area instantly. However, the moment he caught it he nearly jumped up from the ground. It was as though his consciousness had caught a burning piece of coal, the heat searing his very soul.

His mind went completely blank.

When he recovered, he found the rainbow mist was still tightly grasped by his consciousness. Even blacked out, he had refused to give up. However, a grade 5 astral ray was far too powerful for him right now. His soul was nowhere near powerful enough to tame such a source of energy. Richard had to use all his willpower to drag the mist into his body, losing control the moment it entered. His consciousness was completely repelled as the mist spiralled within him, not entering the astral affinity or even his mana pool but the Archeron bloodline instead. In that moment, Richard felt as though a volcano had erupted within his body. Surging fires violently rocked his blood, making him feel like he would be burnt to ashes!

......

When dawn broke on Faust once more, Richard recovered slightly from a bout of extreme weakness. He somehow managed to get up and go downstairs, finding a vitality potion in the study room and impatiently drinking it. Half an hour later, he was a little better.

He reached his right arm out, slightly bewildered as he looked at the wrist. There was a mark of fire upon it, not like natural flames but a totemic symbol of some civilisation instead. He had never seen nor heard of such a mark before, but the arrival of the symbol also indicated a whole new ability that had never been seen in the Archeron Family before— Sacrifice!