Chapter 120: Bad Business

The other contestant barely made it under 10 minutes, even though he’d finished the first half of his pile in less than 1. By the time his timer stopped, Jaxir, Nick and Niri were already being led out of the restaurant toward the auction house connected to it. Jaxir glanced back once and caught the final time sitting at 09:46 before the doors closed behind them.

...

They were moving him through everything pretty quickly, and Jaxir started thinking back to the moment he’d entered the restaurant. First they had registered his staff as collateral before he even agreed to participate, and now they were rushing him toward his treasure selections without giving him much time to do anything else.

Maybe that was the point.

If these selections could be studied somehow, then keeping people moving would make it harder to figure out what was happening before they were already inside. The problem with that idea was that anyone who knew how the process worked could simply prepare beforehand, so Jaxir wasn’t sure what the rush was actually supposed to accomplish.

He looked down at Niri.

The little girl was holding onto one of his sleeves while eating another Pale Fullfruit with her free hand, happily taking advantage of his lifetime supply of food before they’d even left the restaurant. Jaxir smiled when she noticed him looking and took another bite like she had every right to be doing exactly what she was doing.

She was lucky she was adorable.

She also desperately needed a bath, and once Jaxir dealt with that, he needed to figure out what her actual story was. A Natural child wandering around alone, stealing from pirates and hitching rides with strangers couldn’t be normal. He had a feeling the answer was going to matter.

"Can I get another one after this?" Niri asked.

Nick looked over. "He’s had free food for 5 minutes and you’re already abusing it."

"It’s free."

"For him."

Niri ignored him and took another bite, while Jaxir shook his head and continued walking. These two were never going to get along.

A glass bridge connected the second floor of the Pale Orchard to the auction house next door, and the waiter led them across without slowing down. Jaxir could see the main floor below through the glass, where rows of counters and private rooms spread across a much larger building than the restaurant.

"So this whole place belongs to the same merchant group?" Jaxir asked.

"The Pale Orchard and this auction house are both owned by the Velorian Merchant Group."

Jaxir nodded.

They passed through several quieter halls before stopping outside a black door with no markings on it. The waiter opened it and revealed a circular room with a single chair in the middle.

"This is where your selections will be made," the waiter explained. "Once the room is sealed, the lights will go out and selection motes will appear around you."

Jaxir looked into the room. "And I just pick one?"

"One at a time. Your completion time earned you 3 selections, so the process will repeat 3 times."

"Simple enough."

Nick and Niri were directed toward a waiting area farther down the hall, though Niri held onto Jaxir’s sleeve until the waiter reminded her that only the person making the selection could enter. She finally let go and followed Nick while still eating, leaving Jaxir to step inside alone.

The door closed behind him.

A few seconds later, the room went completely dark, and small points of light began appearing around him. There were dozens at first, then hundreds, until pale motes drifted through almost every part of the room.

Jaxir narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on them.

Almost immediately, his head started feeling heavy.

He shifted his attention from one mote to another and felt the pressure build behind his eyes, while concentrating for more than a few seconds made his thoughts feel slower than they should have. Jaxir leaned back in the chair and finally understood why they had rushed him over here.

He was tired.

Not physically tired in the normal sense, either. His body felt fine after processing all the Fullfruit, but forcing that much nourishment through the pathways inside him had taken more concentration than he’d realized at the time.

Divinity didn’t have a Wisdom Stat or anything else that obviously governed mental stamina, since almost everything related to thought and Mana was folded into Mind. Jaxir had 330 Mind before equipment was even considered, so if this was some sort of mental exhaustion, he wasn’t sure why it was hitting him this hard.

Stamina worked strangely too, but at least Jaxir understood part of that system. If someone pushed their body too far, their MP eventually started being used to keep them moving.

This felt different, since his MP wasn’t suddenly draining and no warning had appeared to explain what was happening.

Jaxir rubbed his eyes and tried focusing on the motes again.

He’d been through long battles, pushed his abilities until his Mana was almost gone and spent hours concentrating on things far more complicated than floating lights. He had never felt this kind of fatigue before, which made him wonder whether the problem was really just the Fullfruit.

His eyelids lowered while he thought.

For a moment, he actually fell asleep.

―

[30 Seconds Remaining]

[Select Your First Treasure]

―

Jaxir’s eyes snapped open, and irritation immediately pushed through the fog in his head. They rushed him here after the challenge, put him in a dark room while he could barely think properly, and apparently there was a timer on top of everything else.

He was starting to dislike the way these people did business.

Actually, he was getting pissed off.

Jaxir forced himself upright and stared through the drifting lights again, trying to find anything that separated one from another. Most of them looked completely identical, but as his eyes moved across the room, something faint caught his attention near the edge of his vision.

He focused on it.

There was something there.

Jaxir couldn’t explain what he was sensing, and with the timer continuing to fall, he didn’t have time to figure it out. He reached toward the mote and selected it.

The surrounding lights disappeared.

The mote he’d chosen floated closer and slowly dimmed until whatever was hidden inside became visible in his hands. Jaxir stared down at it for several seconds.

It was a pair of men’s underwear.

Jaxir’s lip twitched.

What he didn’t know was that most of the lights in the room were empty, so finding anything at all on his first selection was already a good result. The underwear wasn’t ordinary either, but an Uncommon hygienic item that would become far more useful once his leveling slowed. Leveling up was akin to a complete rebirth. This was why MP and HP replenished. But it was also why it eliminated hunger and essentially gave you a new body, making showering or cleansing yourself unnecessary.

Jaxir knew none of that, though. As far as he was concerned, these people had rushed him into a dark room while he was half asleep, given him 30 seconds to choose from hundreds of identical lights, and rewarded him with underwear.

His gaze grew cold.