Chapter 429 Auction trap (6)
The eldest prince talked to me for a bit before sitting back down on his own balcony.
After he was gone, I deeply knitted my brows as I tried to figure out just what the eldest prince was doing here.
But I couldn't think of anything no matter how I tried.
It just didn't make sense that the eldest prince would suddenly appear in this place…
I just spent the rest of the time before the auction thinking about all the different reasons that this might be possible.
It was only when the auction began that I was finally pulled out of my thoughts.
The auction started with the lights dimming in the room and a spotlight appearing on stage.
When the spotlight appeared, there was a person that walked out who stood under it.
This person didn't look like an auctioneer, he looked like the perfect example of a crooked merchant. With his top hat, his round glasses, his pencil thin moustache, and the evil look on his face.
No matter how one looked at him, he seemed like someone that would rip you off.
But when he came onto the stage, there were quite a few people that cheered for him.
It seemed that he was quite the famous auctioneer.
That evil looking auctioneer revealed a smile before saying, "Everyone, thank you for coming to our auction today. I'm sure that there will be something here that will satisfy everyone's tastes."
With a wave of the hand, there were several people that suddenly pushed something onto the stage.
This was a large thing that seemed like a large cage of some sort, but it was covered by a cloth so I wasn't able to see what it was.
But when I looked at it, the only thing that I could think of was that this…was some kind of cage.
In the game, slaves were a thing.
Even in this kingdom, slaves were a thing.
I had stayed away from that since I just didn't feel right about using slaves, but that didn't mean that the rest of the kingdom didn't use them…
So it was likely that there was a slave under that cloth…
However, it turned out that I was wrong.
When the large cage thing was brought onto the stage and the cloth was taken off, I found that it wasn't a cage at all.
Under that cloth was a large glass case that had something in the center of it.
When I looked at it closely, it seemed like a shield that was carved out of jade.
But one would think that a shield like this would only be for decoration and not for actual use.
Not to mention, it didn't seem that luxurious in the first place.
So why was the auction house selling this shield?
The auctioneer could see the looks of confusion on the faces in the crowd, but he didn't seem to panic at all when he saw this. He just revealed a faint smile as if he had already expected this and gave time for the crowd to carefully look at this shield.
After letting them stew for a bit, the auctioneer suddenly said, "I'm sure that everyone is confused on what this thing is. Well, let me give you some ideas then."
He walked over to the side of the glass case and raised a hand to gesture at this shield before saying, "This shield is a magic item that was discovered in the northern reaches of the kingdom. It is unknown what this item can do, but it does have one thing special about it."
His voice fell after he said this and he didn't tell everyone what was so special.
Instead, there was a man with a large hammer that came onto the stage.
This was a powerful looking man with large muscles that lifted that large hammer like it was nothing.
After coming onto the stage, the staff members by the glass case opened it up and carefully brought out the shield. Another staff member had brought out a table that they placed the shield on.
The large man with the hammer came up in front of this and then lifted the hammer up.
Everyone watched with bated breath as they waited to see what would happen.
Then as they expected, the large man with the hammer slammed that hammer right down on the shield placed on the table.
The force of this smash caused the legs of the table to split in half and the table collapsed under this force.
Everyone couldn't help raising their hand to block the gust of wind that came from the stage.
Once the gust of wind died down, they all stretched their heads out to look at the stage, to see what had happened to the shield.
When the large man lifted up his hammer, they were all shocked to find that the shield under it didn't even seem to have a single scratch on it. Even though it had been smashed with such force, there wasn't a single dent.
They had all expected it to be ruined, if not damaged from the force of this smash.
Not a single one of them had expected the shield to be perfectly fine like this.
Just what was this shield that could block this kind of strike?
Or was it all a trick?
The auctioneer came forward after the large man's demonstration and said, "As you can see, this is a shield that is indestructible as far as we can tell. We have experimented with many different things, but not a single one of them was able to put a single dent in this shield. There is no doubt that whoever owns this shield will have the strongest absolute defense."
The auctioneer then waited for a bit to let the tension rise in the crowd.
He knew exactly what he was doing as everyone started to whisper to each other.
After letting them go for a bit, he said, "Now, let's start this auction. Do I hear an opening bid?"
This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶