Not to mention he felt like this was kind of a test, a test to see how truly deep his pockets were.
Hye decided right on the spot to accept such a challenge and score a full mark on this test.
"What's the entry fee? How much do you need from my bones?" he directly asked for the price, before adding, "but don't mistake my intentions. If there aren't any huge amounts of crystals being sold there, then I won't take part in this."
"Oh, there is even something far more interesting than just crystals," her face beamed with a bright smile all of sudden, putting away the stern mask over her face and starting to look a bit cheerful and warm.
"I'm not interested in anything but crystals…"
"It's a Crystal Heart," she interrupted him. And when he showed a puzzled expression on his face, she added in explanation, "it's a portable space, one that can produce lots of crystals over time."
"Oh, like mine?" Hye tried to guess the true nature of this heart. And yet he wasn't that close to the truth.
"It's a special space where you place crystals there and they grow trees," the lady nymph spoke in a weird envious and greedy tone, "consider it as a fertile soil, and crystals are the seeds."
"Is that it?!" Hye didn't get why even a lady green nymph acted in such a way, "it seems pretty useless to me!"
"No, you are gravely mistaken," Uncle Lam joined the talk, adding in a slow tone, "the space is boundless. As you gather up more crystals and plant them there, nourish the space with enough energy, you can harvest tons of crystals from these trees."
"That's not only everything," the princess chimed in, as if she and her uncle wanted to convince Hye to join this auction, "if you poured enough energy there, you could get higher grade crystals from them."
"That looks amazing and all, but… What's the catch?" Hye wasn't a fool. If there was something magical like this out there in the universe, then hearing about brutal wars going on for it wouldn't be a surprise.
"Well…" the princess seemed to get startled by Hye's sudden question.
"The problem is in the amount of energy required," the lady nymph answered his question, "it's as you guessed, this is too good to be true. Everything they said is true indeed, except for each crystal to rise up and grow from being a seed to a towering tree requires a huge amount of energy rich items. As for levelling the crystals up, you'll definitely need a treasure to do it."
"Hmm… I see," Hye knew this might be an annoying headache for anyone having this item, but not for him. Energy problem? He already had his bones to begin with. As for the amount needed, he didn't care about that.
If he had to exchange his bones with crystals, his easily acquired bones from battles that wouldn't stop or end, exchanging them with precious and hard to acquire crystals, then he was willing to do it.
Yet there was another question and doubt he had to make sure of first before accepting this princess' offer.
"How long does it take for a crystal to become a tree, fully grown and ready to harvest?"
If the time needed was going to be long, then he'd not risk his bones for such a deal. He needed to plant tons of crystals inside this isolated space and provide tons of his bones all the time. If he wasn't going to harvest it in a short time, then it wasn't profit-cost effective.
"That depends," Uncle Lam paused, thinking deeply about his answer, "according to the amount of energy you place there, the time needed to grow each tree varies. It also depends on the overall number of crystals you plant there, and the real goal of you."
"What do you mean?" Hye didn't get anything but a vague answer, "can you give me examples in numbers?"
"Hmm, that's hard actually," the princess cleared her throat before adding, "the shortest amount of time ever recorded was just one week. The owner planted ten million crystals at one go, spent a fortune to amass endless energy rich items and treasures, using them all to fasten the process of producing the trees."
"And? What was his gain?" Hye finally got a rough estimate about how long it'd take him to grow these trees.
"According to rumours, each tree produced one thousand crystal fruits in the end, with many coming out in higher grades on top of that."
"That's interesting," Hye started to get tempted to try out this item. He knew his bones would replace any high energy items. And if he went all out, using the high grade dark realm and Holy Ones bones, then he'd end up producing crystal trees in much lesser duration.
"How much do you need for me to take part in the auction?" Hye paused before adding, "you do know I can only pay in bones. So, you have to come up with a way to round my bones' value."
"We just need one million of such bones as an entry fee," the princess opened up the deal with such a scary amount of bones. She even took one of Hye's bones, a blue grade normal one.
"One million of these? How much will that item cost me then!!" Hye was taken aback. He didn't spend that figure even in all his deals so far.
Paying one million bones wasn't an issue for him at all, yet he wanted to see why this auction was worth paying such a price to begin with. He was just going to be granted access towards the auction and wouldn't get anything at all in return for all these bones.
"You'll get a twenty percent discount over any deals going on there," she said when she noticed the prey she tried so hard to lure in was about to run away, "aside from this magnificent item, there are more precious and useful items out there. You are free to take part in any auction happening inside if anything picks your interest."
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