The upper echelons of Sky City did not smell of ash, ozone, or the metallic tang of spilled blood. They smelled of spun sugar, aged spirit-wine, and the heavy, suffocating perfume of untestified arrogance.
Squad 7 walked through the vaulted, gold-leafed corridors of the Golden Cauldron Auction House, the premier trading hub of the Imperial Merchant Guilds. Among the silk-clad nobility and the jewel-draped guild masters, the five teenagers in their unreflective black-and-gold Vanguard uniforms looked like a pack of starving wolves that had accidentally wandered into a royal ballroom.
They had spent the last three weeks practically living in the Deep Canyons and the subterranean border-zones. To raise the tens of millions of Imperial Credits required for the Temporal Jadeite, they had executed sixteen back-to-back Black-Tier Vanguard bounties. They had slaughtered acidic Wyverns, dismantled rogue elemental cults, and harvested the cores of beasts that made veteran mercenaries weep.
They had not slept in a proper bed in twenty-one days.
"I feel ridiculous," Robert Vance muttered, adjusting the high collar of his Vanguard jacket. His star-flecked Void-snake, 'Null', was coiled tightly around his wrist, actively hissing at a passing noblewoman whose perfume was aggressively floral. "We have enough liquid capital on these credit chips to buy a small city block, and they're still looking at us like we tracked mud onto their carpets."
"We did track mud onto their carpets," Prince Zhao Long replied smoothly, gesturing to his heavy combat boots, which were still caked in the dried, grey blood of a Tier 5 Stone-Basilisk they had killed that morning. "And let them stare. The minor nobility always glares at the executioner's axe until it's swinging at their necks."
Kai Hart walked at the front of the formation, his molten-gold eyes scanning the massive, tiered amphitheater of the main auction hall.
Since achieving Martial Artist Tier 3 (Low) and forming his perfect spherical core, Kai's presence had fundamentally shifted. He no longer leaked the suffocating, heavy gravity of his Titan Pulse. The Celestial Marrow Ignition had refined his internal control to absolute perfection. To the untrained eye, he looked like a completely normal, unarmed teenager. But to the veteran guards and high-tier cultivators stationed around the auction house, looking at Kai felt like staring into the event horizon of a black hole. There was a terrifying, absolute absence of readable Qi.
"Box four," Princess Yan whispered, her violet eyes tracking the usher who was bowing nervously toward them. "House Vane sponsored our entry, but we are technically independent bidders tonight. Keep your auras tight. The Merchant Guilds employ Tier 4 security."
They stepped into the plush, velvet-lined private box overlooking the massive central stage. Maya set her massive, dented Deep-Earth Shale shield against the wall with a heavy thud that rattled the crystal champagne flutes on the table.
Kai sat in the high-backed velvet chair at the front of the box. He leaned his forearms on the balcony railing, looking down at the sea of wealthy patrons.
"System," Kai murmured silently. "Give me an atmospheric scan."
[Scanning Local Environment...]
[Hostile Intent Detected: 47 distinct signatures.]
[Average Cultivation Level of hostile signatures: Tier 2 (Peak) to Tier 4 (Low).]
[Assessment: The local populace is highly agitated by the Host's presence.]
Kai let out a slow, superheated breath. The news of what he had done to Lord Julian of House Vane in the central courtyard had spread like wildfire. The minor noble houses, the ones who relied on their wealth and pedigree rather than front-line combat, saw Kai as an existential threat to their social hierarchy. A Mud-Boy with a Vanguard collar was a glitch in their perfect system.
"They know why we are here," Princess Yan said, taking a seat beside him and pulling out an elegant, gold-rimmed auction ledger. "Temporal Jadeite is a highly restricted mineral. It's primarily used by the Imperial Court to maintain long-range spatial communication arrays and to preserve Tier-3 Elixirs. Ten pounds of it hitting the public market is a once-in-a-decade event."
"We have forty-two million Imperial Credits," Robert said, tossing a heavy stack of platinum data-chips onto the table. "That should be enough to buy the jadeite three times over."
"It's not about the market value, Robert," Prince Zhao Long warned, his violet eyes narrowing as he looked across the amphitheater. He pointed toward a lavishly decorated box directly opposite theirs. "It's about spite. Look who holds the paddle in Box Seven."
Kai followed the Prince's gaze. Sitting in Box Seven was a young man with sharp features, dressed in immaculate white-and-crimson silk. He was surrounded by a retinue of sneering sycophants. It was Julian's older brother, Lord Cassius of House Vane.
While Lord Vane himself—the scarred patriarch—had authorized Kai's resource requisitions, the younger generation of the House clearly hadn't gotten the memo. Cassius was a Tier 3 (Mid) cultivator who managed the family's merchant fleet. He was holding a golden bidding paddle, and his eyes were locked directly onto Kai, filled with a cold, venomous promise.
"He's going to bleed us," Kai stated, perfectly calm. "He doesn't need the Jadeite. He just wants to force us to drain our entire Vanguard bounty fund out of petty revenge for his brother's crushed wrist."
"Let me go over there and break his wrist too," Zhao Long offered, his magma-veins glowing faintly under his collar.
"No," Kai said, leaning back in his chair. "We play by the rules of the room. Until the rules break."
For the next two hours, the auction proceeded with agonizing slowness. Rare spirit-herbs, low-grade mythic beast eggs, and Tier-2 weapon schematics were paraded across the stage. Squad 7 didn't flinch. They conserved their capital, watching the bloated nobility throw millions of credits at trivial baubles.
Finally, the crystal chandeliers dimmed. A heavy, lead-lined vault was wheeled onto the center of the stage by two Tier 3 guards.
The auctioneer, a slick man with a magically amplified voice, unlocked the vault. He pulled out a reinforced glass cylinder containing ten pounds of glowing, ethereal green stone. The Temporal Jadeite. Even from fifty yards away, Kai could feel the faint, unnatural distortion of time radiating from the mineral.
"And now, the crown jewel of the evening's geological offerings," the auctioneer declared, his voice booming across the amphitheater. "Ten pounds of flawless Temporal Jadeite, excavated from the deep-crust fissures of the Western Wastes. Bidding begins at ten million Imperial Credits!"
Kai didn't move. He simply nodded at Robert.
Robert raised Squad 7's paddle. "Fifteen million."
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Jumping the opening bid by five million was an aggressive Vanguard tactic, designed to immediately scare off the casual buyers.
But Lord Cassius in Box Seven merely smiled. He raised his golden paddle. "Twenty million."
The auctioneer beamed. "Twenty million from House Vane! Do I hear—"
"Twenty-five," Robert called out, his jaw tightening.
"Thirty," Cassius countered instantly, not even looking at the stage. His eyes remained fixed on Kai, a mocking sneer twisting his lips.
The crowd fell silent, the tension in the room thickening. This was no longer an auction; it was a public execution of Squad 7's finances. The minor nobles began to whisper, pointing at the "Mud-Boy" and laughing softly as the pristine wealth of the Great Houses casually crushed his month of bloody, life-threatening mercenary work.
"Thirty-five," Robert gritted his teeth, looking nervously at the stack of platinum chips on their table. They only had forty-two million.
"Forty-five million," Cassius said loudly, his voice echoing through the silent amphitheater. He leaned over his balcony, addressing Kai directly. "You Vanguard dogs really should learn your place. You can scavenge in the mud for pennies all month, but true wealth belongs to the bloodlines. Run back to your kennels, Mud-Boy."
Robert lowered the paddle, his hands shaking with a mixture of rage and absolute defeat. "Kai... we're out. We don't have forty-five million."
Princess Yan closed her ledger, her face pale. Maya gripped her shield, looking ready to throw it across the room. Zhao Long stood up, a localized tectonic tremor shaking the velvet box.
Kai Hart did not look defeated.
He didn't even look angry.
Kai slowly stood up. He walked to the edge of the balcony, resting his hands on the railing. The dark, metallic sheen of his Black-Diamond Carapace caught the dim light of the chandeliers.
"Forty-five million Imperial Credits," the auctioneer yelled, pointing at Cassius. "Going once! Going twice—!"
"Hold," Kai commanded.
He didn't yell, but his voice was fueled by the hyper-dense liquid Qi of his Celestial Marrow. The word struck the entire amphitheater like a physical blow, vibrating in the chests of every cultivator in the room. The auctioneer physically stumbled backward.
Kai reached into the pocket of his Vanguard jacket. He didn't pull out a platinum data-chip. He pulled out a heavy, jagged piece of pure, absolute black-diamond crystal.
It was a fragment of the Exarch Prime's severed arm—the one he had kept before Anvil had consumed the core.
Kai tossed it over the balcony.
The heavy, impossibly dense alien armor plummeted through the air and slammed into the center of the auction stage. It hit the reinforced star-iron floor with the force of a cannonball, embedding itself three inches deep into the metal, cracking the entire stage in half.
The entire auction house froze in sheer, unadulterated terror. The lingering, radioactive, world-ending aura of a Tier 2 (Peak) Exarch commander flooded the room. Several of the wealthy merchants in the front row actually fainted.
"What... what is that?" the auctioneer stammered, staring at the black-diamond fragment as if it were a live bomb.
"That is a piece of an Exarch Prime's carapace," Kai stated, his voice echoing in the dead silence. "It is completely immune to Tier 1, Tier 2, and low-Tier 3 elemental attacks. It is a biological metamaterial that your guild's Forgemasters would sell their own children to study."
Kai looked across the room at Lord Cassius, whose smug smile had entirely vanished, replaced by a pale, trembling horror.
"You want to play the game of wealth, Cassius?" Kai asked, his molten-gold eyes burning with five-colored light. "You measure your worth in digits on a glass chip. I measure mine in the corpses of the things coming to exterminate your family."
Kai turned back to the terrified auctioneer.
"I bid forty-two million Imperial Credits," Kai said coldly. "Plus that fragment of the Exarch Prime. If Lord Cassius wishes to outbid me, he is welcome to walk down to Sector 7, decapitate an alien warlord, and put its armor on the table."
The silence in the Golden Cauldron was absolute. No one breathed. The Guild Masters in the highest boxes were already frantically signaling the auctioneer, their eyes wide with greed as they stared at the alien metamaterial. An Exarch Prime fragment wasn't just rare; it was a priceless strategic asset.
Lord Cassius gripped the railing of his box, his knuckles turning white. He opened his mouth to speak, to offer fifty million, sixty million—but he stopped. The suffocating, apex-predator pressure Kai was passively projecting across the room warned him that if he raised that paddle again, he wouldn't be leaving the auction house alive.
"I... I yield the floor," Cassius choked out, throwing his golden paddle onto the ground and stepping back into the shadows of his box.
The auctioneer swallowed hard, wiping a thick layer of sweat from his brow. He didn't even bother with the countdown.
"Sold!" the auctioneer yelled, slamming his gavel down so hard it splintered. "To Initiate Hart of the Elite Vanguard!"
Five minutes later, Squad 7 walked out of the Golden Cauldron Auction House through the VIP exit.
Robert was carrying a heavy, lead-lined containment box under his arm, holding it as if it were a newborn child. Inside rested the ten pounds of Temporal Jadeite.
"That," Zhao Long laughed, clapping Kai heavily on the shoulder, "was the most arrogant, disrespectful, utterly magnificent thing I have ever seen a commoner do to a High Noble."
"It wasn't arrogance, Long," Kai said, walking steadily into the cool night air of Sky City. "It was an exchange of commodities. We just bought a decade of time. The money and the alien scrap were a cheap price to pay."
"So we have the array schematics, and we have the Jadeite," Princess Yan said, her tactical mind already moving to the next step. "But we still don't have an Array Master to carve the spatial runes, and we are still waiting on the Dean to return with the Tier 3 Spatial Beast Core."
Kai looked up at the stars, his Celestial Marrow pumping a steady, endless supply of raw power through his veins.
"The Dean will not fail," Kai said quietly. "As for the Array Master... there is a certain outcast in the Academy's lower dungeons who owes me a favor. We build the chamber tomorrow."