Chapter 688: Worth

Grey kept staring at the Muse Incorporated emblem for another few seconds, but the tension never really settled in. This was still happening inside the Genesis Games, and with Earth now integrated, the Genesis Council had already lost a noticeable amount of control over the System, which made it even less likely that Muse could reach in here and do anything meaningful.

More than likely, this was sponsorship, ownership, or some other corporate arrangement that let Muse plaster its symbol across the auction without actually controlling it. If nothing else, it explained why Breejara looked basically like a twin of Breejah.

Sabrina noticed the direction of his gaze and leaned slightly toward him. "What’s wrong?"

Grey looked over at her and smiled. "You’re not sitting next to me. That’s the real problem."

Sabrina rolled her eyes, though there was already a challenge in the way she looked at him. "Even if I dared to sit next to you, would you dare to do anything about it?"

"Sit over here and find out."

Grey’s grin lasted right up until both Sabrina and Amunet stood at the same time, then crossed the room without saying a word. Sabrina settled onto his left while Amunet took his right, and the two of them leaned back against the couch before crossing their legs in almost perfect unison, each wearing the sort of expression that made Grey suddenly feel like he’d been tricked into volunteering for something.

His lip twitched as he looked from one to the other, but neither gave him anything to work with.

Across the room, Brad watched the whole thing unfold before slowly shaking his head. "I told him if he wasn’t gonna play, pass the controller. Now look at him."

Mensah sighed as though witnessing a great personal tragedy. "Full-on deer in headlights. Can’t even handle two at the same time, what’s he gonna do with more?"

James barely looked up from the food in his hands. "He actually has. After Sabrina found out about that threesome, she didn’t talk to him for three months, and he never tried it again."

Brad’s expression immediately shifted into understanding. "Ah. PTSD."

"A real shame," James said around another mouthful.

Grey turned just enough to glare in their direction, though before he could explain how badly they were all about to die, Breejara’s voice rolled over the auction hall again. Three circular platforms rose around her at once, each carrying a weapon concealed beneath a veil of golden light, and the bidding interfaces throughout the private bubbles immediately came alive.

"Enough romance, darlings. Some of you came here to lose money for much nobler reasons."

The golden veils dropped together, revealing a sword, a spear and a shield, and the change in the audience was immediate. Grey had expected the early lots to be impressive enough to keep people interested, but the markings appearing beside each weapon made him straighten slightly.

All three were Dominion Class.

Breejara gestured toward the sword first, a long silver-black blade with thin crimson lines running through the fuller and converging near a plain dark guard. "Our first Legacy Item is The Last Measure, inheritance of Varos Tel, a Linear Frame swordsman who spent his life reducing every technique he learned into a single perfect action, until his Dominion could strip away wasted motion from both body and blade."

The screen shifted toward the spear next, its pale shaft wrapped in bands of blue metal while the translucent spearhead shimmered as though part of it existed somewhere else. "Beside it, we have The Choirpiercer, a Resonant Legacy left by Mother Elya Ren, whose Dominion allowed each thrust to propagate through the space she had claimed, turning one attack into many without ever changing the motion of her hand."

Finally, Breejara swept toward the shield, whose overlapping plates continued rearranging themselves even while it rested on the platform. "And completing our opening set is The Thousand Door Bulwark, a Branching Legacy built by Caleth Mora, whose defensive Dominion continuously created new responses from the same structure, sacrificing damaged routes and opening replacements before the next strike ever arrived."

The starting bids appeared beneath all three.

Grey’s amusement disappeared almost immediately, though not for the reason anyone else in the room would have expected. He didn’t want any of these things for himself, but that only made them more interesting.

His gaze moved toward Brad.

Among everyone from Earth sitting in this room, Brad was probably the second strongest after Grey and Amunet, and the reason wasn’t difficult to understand. The hammer had chosen him, and through Ma Famille his understanding of both the weapon and the path behind it had advanced so quickly that Brad barely resembled the man Grey remembered from before.

That thought made Grey look toward the others next.

James, Duke, Sabrina and Lilac were all here, but Grey couldn’t even say with confidence what their Frames were, much less what sort of paths would actually suit them. He had spent so much time trying to keep Earth alive that he’d barely looked at the people closest to him as Candidates at all, and Duke’s joke about wanting a cheat code suddenly felt less ridiculous than it had earlier.

The bids began rising across all three platforms while Grey kept watching the Legacies.

For most people, trying to buy several of them would be idiotic. Compatibility alone made that obvious, since someone could spend a fortune winning a Legacy only for it to reject them, and even then they’d still lose half of whatever they had bid.

Grey’s eyes narrowed slightly.

’But do I actually have the same problem?’

Ma Famille had already shown that it could do far more than simply connect a group of people. Grey had watched it spread understanding and reinforce paths in ways that ignored what should have been normal limitations, and Brad’s relationship with the hammer was the clearest proof of that.

If one of these Legacies was already somewhat compatible with one of his people, could Ma Famille help bridge the rest of the gap?

Grey had no idea. But what he did know was that there probably wasn’t a single legacy in existence that he couldn’t force himself to be compatible with. Whether his friends would still be compatible with them later could be sorted out in due time, or maybe he could just buy enough of them that at least one would be enough, or maybe a combination of them might work out just perfectly...?

The numbers beneath the three weapons continued climbing as richer factions began testing one another, while Grey stayed out of it for the much simpler reason that he currently had the impressive net worth of absolutely fucking nothing. Until his blueprints sold, every Blue Cyber Core he imagined spending existed entirely inside his own head.

That wouldn’t have mattered nearly as much if the auction had only been about making his friends stronger.

The entire reason Grey was here was to secure enough Blue Cyber Cores for Prometheus to calculate the catacomb cascade before Earth’s Integration Veil came down. If his blueprints sold for exactly enough to cover that cost and Grey had already burned half of it trying to turn Duke into some legendary warrior, then whatever happened afterward would be entirely his own fault.

He rubbed his thumb along his jaw while the bids continued to climb, but the other side of the problem refused to disappear.

If the blueprints sold for far more than Prometheus needed, was Grey really going to walk away with a mountain of Cyber Cores while the people closest to him remained weak enough to get swatted aside by whatever came looking for him next? That didn’t sit right either, especially now that Aelthar had made it clear that the rest of the Genesis Games was already starting to notice Earth.

Grey’s gaze settled on the three golden platforms again as a different possibility began taking shape.

Maybe the Elemental blueprints didn’t have to send only one message.

If they sold for enough, Grey could use the same auction that warned the Elementals to start preparing the people around him as well, turning one act of revenge into something considerably more useful. The only question was whether he could afford to gamble even a fraction of Earth’s survival before he knew what those blueprints were actually worth.