The Path of Ascension 3: A LitRPG Adventure

19

Only slightly mollified, Matt continued their job of escorting teams to the forts without further complaint.

After they finished up, they flew back to the army-built city to catch the teleporter back to the neutral city. On the way, Liz privately messaged him. “You heard what Juni said about the kingdom’s war points, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I think we should try and squeeze both vassals for their points.”

Matt was interested, so he motioned for her to continue.

“We have a few dozen Tier 5 mana cultivation potions left. But I still have a spatial bag full of the dried ingredients, just waiting for me to make them into something useful. We could sell them with Samuel acting as an intermediary. If we sell them in an auction, it will force both sides to bid for them. They’re only good for Tier 5 people, sure, but if one side has them, they would have a stronger base. It would start a bidding war. We could get all the points!”

Matt actually liked the idea. There were quite a few things they could buy that would help their combat effectiveness, if they were clever.

Liz continued, “Did you see the healing skills? There’s like thirty cracked healing spells listed. Some are even pretty good. Think what we could do with a healing spell or three.”

With a quick thought, he was on the page and saw what Liz was talking about. It was frankly absurd how many different cracked skills there were. Matt had a fleeting image of someone with a pile of healing skills, smacking them one at a time with a hammer, then tossing them away. He shook his head to clear the ludicrous thought away, then looked at the options once again.

[Ranged Heal], the most common healing spell, normally had a base cost of 100 mana, which put it just outside Matt’s ability to cast. But at Tier 7, they could have a healing spell in reserve, which would make any future delving much safer. They still had to deal with the healing cooldown from magical healing, but it was better than having to pay for a healer or fighting through injuries in a battle.

Ideally, they would get the less expensive cracked versions, and get a skill shard for each of them, but they were expensive. If they took the [Cracked Ranged Heal] that only healed skin, it would be a waste. Why that was even an option, Matt didn’t know. But he guessed that there was probably someone who could use the skill to great effect, somewhere out there.

With the plan set, Liz went to rent out an alchemy room, and Matt found Samuel at an auction house.

When Matt explained their idea, the man looked hesitant, until he took out a vial of the potion for him to inspect.

The man then turned giddy.

Holding the murky potion up to the light, he said, “The auction houses were already kind of planning something like this. They were going to hold a huge auction of goods for the people coming in this week, right after the second wave of Pathers comes in.”

He winked at Matt. “Speaking of that, I know you kept back some skills in your little bucket. Have any more you want to sell? I expect things will go for a premium in the first auction.”

“We still have some, but I think we want to save them. For now, we’re more interested in potions. What do you expect them to sell for?”

Samuel wiggled his hand back and forth. “I’d bet the starting bid goes for at least 100 war points. I’m not really sure. If they were Tier 6, it would be more, but at Tier 5, they’re for the fodder troops. They might want to buy with money instead of points as well.”

“We don’t need the money. We’d like to only sell for points.”

“Sorry, Matt. If you want to guarantee that they’re sold for points, you need to put them on the market. But there aren’t that many Tier 5s in the war. If you spread them out, you can probably get a few more points, but the auction house can’t force the vassals to bid with points. A percentage of any bulk items needs to be sold for mana stones.”

Samuel shrugged. “How many are you looking to sell? That’s really what will have the greatest impact.”

Matt wasn’t sure but tried to give a best guess. “Maybe two hundred-ish.”

“Hmm. Maybe we can work that into an only points sale. If we put a bunch out, maybe fifty, then ration the rest over the next few auctions, we could get them to spend points. You should put at least another fifty on the Empire market itself, though.”

Matt dropped off the five potions Liz had with Samuel and left to go join in some team training.

During the next week, they took various small missions, but with the reinforcements of kingdom personnel, the menial tasks like fortifying the thousands of forts had dried up. It was a small income they were sad to see go, but more than one fort had been seized, or at least attempted to be taken, earning points for everyone involved who had survived.

There was more talk of increasing operations, but the news of all the auction houses holding a joint auction derailed any plans that either side had. The leaked items had sent everyone into a tizzy, and no one was willing to risk their points with something like that coming up, so everyone was overly cautious.

Matt and Liz were both peeved that nearly half of the items were ones they had sold to the auction house in bulk previously. They schemed about making their own auction house and putting them all out of business, but their joking quickly fell apart when they started looking into it. There were simply far too many logistical problems to even think about, especially for something so petty as revenge for reselling items that they didn’t even care about.

As he was in the gym getting some solo weight work in, his AI pinged him. He was so surprised, he nearly dropped the weight he was benching.

Melinda and her team had arrived. He hadn’t been sure that they would come, but the thrill of seeing his friends again after so long sent him running to the shower while sending them a message.

“You guys came? I hope you didn’t choose the queendom! Haha!”

Even if they did choose the queendom, it wasn’t a big deal, but it would be nice to fight with his friends. Fighting against them could be fun, too, but working with them as comrades was clearly the better option.

Liz was mixing a potion when Matt messaged her that his friends had arrived on the planet to participate in the war, and he set up dinner with them.

“Dinner with Melinda’s group. They just arrived. They said they can be ready in half an hour.”

“f**k!” Her surprise caused her to add too much reagent and ruin the potion. She hardly cared about that, but the fact that it caused a bitterly sweet smell to waft over her and the table was a different story. She knew that she wouldn’t have time to clean up and still join up with them at the time they set to meet.

Cursing, she quickly scrubbed at the table while throwing her borrowed glassware into the cleaning station. She’d pay a premium for the cleaning, but the Tier 7 mana stone meant much less to her than making sure she made a good impression on Matt’s friends.

They were the closest thing to family that he had. They exchanged messages at least once a month, and she was determined to earn their approval.

If they are Matt’s friends, that means they could be my friends.

The thought caused her to stumble into a table. Aster looked up from her cooling bed with a questioning yip.

“New friends! This is exciting, Aster. People that like me for me and not my parents.”

Aster curled back up, but Liz didn’t give her the chance to nap again. Aster had it easy, and only had to nap on the ice blanket to passively increase her ice aspect, but Liz had no time to let the fox continue to lounge around. She had friends to make.