The market was facing something that had rarely happened in decades.
News of the new fire weapon had traveled millions of kilometers in hours. When the information reached the human Lords of the central group, they united to buy as much as possible without drawing attention. Discreet. Coordinated. Efficient.
Until the fourth day.
In a closed room, seven people spoke in low voices. It wasn't the kind of conversation that happened in an open market — it was the kind that needed walls. The subject wasn't betrayal, nor lack of capital. It was something that none of them, with all their accumulated experience, had faced before: real uncertainty, without precedent, without a manual.
"Are you saying the seller didn't restrict the information by race?"
"Yes. And they also leaked what the item does and how it works."
When the information leaked — of course it leaked. Spies and corrupt individuals existed everywhere, and for the right price whoever couldn't buy the item would at least make money by talking. It was the oldest logic of the market: when you can't have the product, you sell access to information about it. The lack of capital had become a serious problem.
"Do you think we can buy the remaining ones?"
"No. It's impossible to compete with some of the races participating. Even the Zhur'kai will probably snap up one of the items."
The news was a calculated catastrophe.
Something a human had created — or that had at least appeared first in human territory, given the peculiar name — was being auctioned without racial restriction. Someone had decided, for a reason nobody could confirm, that profit was worth more than exclusivity, even if it was for the good of their own race. And now the damage was done.
"We'll have to unite to grab as many as possible. We can't let the enemy have access to this technology."
Those Lords had barely emerged from the invasion that, at great cost, they had annihilated just a few months before — and were already facing a more dangerous problem. The invasion had been known. There had been time for traps, preparation, coordination. This had caught them unprepared.
And the question that nobody voiced but everyone thought was always the same.
Why didn't I think of this first.
It was arrogance, of course. Even being an item of few supplies and an ancient recipe, in the Oasis — where everything needed to be done manually, tested manually, adjusted manually — it meant months of high-risk work and knowledge that most Lords simply wouldn't have had beforehand. The recipe existed somewhere in human history. But arriving at it required the right context, at the right moment, with willingness for months of failure before the first functional result. The Lords gathered in that place were too important to waste time on that. It was the cruelty of being too large.
"If we find out who sold it, maybe we can stop them from continuing. For god's sake we don't even know how many more will be sold before the stock runs out."
The woman in the provocative dress and scarlet hair managed to extract from the others in the room a sense of compatibility and desire that few leaders achieved without visible effort. Of course what she said was very theoretical — in practice, talking and doing were completely opposite things. Nobody knew who the seller was, who had made no effort to identify themselves. And despite the irritation with the unknown person's attitude, everyone in the room recognized them in some way — after all, half of those present would have done the same. The other half wouldn't even have gotten as far as selling.
"I agree with Cassandra, perhaps we should look for whoever bought the supplies. It can't be hard to locate them."
A man whose only notable feature was his shiny and perfectly polished bald head spoke, trying to build an alliance with the scarlet-haired woman — the kind of move that everyone in the room saw happen and nobody commented on. But before she could respond, a stocky and heavyset man, whose only attractive feature was a scarlet eye that seemed to belong to another face, intervened with the specific arrogance of someone who had calculated the answer before the question finished.
"Bartolomeu, are you stupid? Half the items used are common use. The other half too. Unless the person made a massive concentrated purchase — what you're talking about is pure foolishness."
"How dare you, you—"
Overlapping voices. Accusations. The kind of argument that has no objective beyond releasing the tension of those who can't act on the real problem.
The others remained silent.
A great deal had happened in a few months — it was as though something or someone had arrived in the Oasis just to shake the place at will, without warning, without asking permission, without following any pattern the established Lords could anticipate.
Then a woman with blue hair and icy eyes raised her hand.
Just that.
The argument ended without an apparent winner.
"Without knowing who it is and what their motivation is, the most we can do is accept what we bought." — she spoke with the cadence of someone who had reached the conclusion before entering the room. — "I will not allow us to spend more money competing with any other civilization."
"But Lady Veronica—"
"Silence."
A pause.
"I don't believe whoever made this item has the capacity to produce in large quantities — if they did, they wouldn't sell one unit per day. I doubt they put up more than ten or twenty units. The damage is done." — she paused. — "What I want now is for us to use what we bought for reverse engineering. If we all have the recipe, nobody has a real advantage."
The woman was young. But her family was not — and from them she had learned, early enough for it to become instinct, that whoever controlled the narrative after defeat controlled what came next. It wasn't talent. It was inheritance transformed into second nature. That was why she led the largest merchant guild in the human kingdom.
"We, the Blue Unicorns, lost today. But we will return stronger and prepared."
"Hurrah!" "Hurrah!" "Hurrah!"
The unanimous cry was the trigger for the meeting's end.
When everyone left, the blue-haired woman remained seated. A fair-haired man of average height approached — he would be mistaken for human if not for his pointed ears. An elf. But not just any elf. A Grand-Elf.
"My Lady… what do you think will happen when the other races acquire the item?"
She snapped out of her thoughts quickly.
"Honestly, Elarion, I hope they only use it for defense. Or, like us, to reproduce the recipe."
"But what if it's for attack? Do you think they'll use this as an excuse?"
Her eyes darkened as she processed the possibility.
"Then I think we're fucked."
✦
"Holy shit… that's a lot of stones."
Livina and Morgana were stunned.
I wasn't.
I had calculated that something like this would happen — especially after not restricting the auction by race. The risk had been enormous. But I knew greed. I knew what happens when something rare appears without access restrictions: it isn't the strongest who buys, it's the fastest. And the fastest pays whatever is necessary not to be left behind.
"The risk was enormous. But the return surprised me."
In front of me — nearly thirty Exceptional quality Nectar Stones.
Thirty.
Most Lords went entire years without seeing a single exceptional stone at any level. I was looking at thirty of them.
Of course this time I didn't collect the prize all at once. I had already understood that even if the seller's identity was a secret, there would be people trying to discover it — and the only viable window was at the moment of collection, since the value wasn't small. Almost ten days after the end of the auction was the date I chose, and even then I made sure to go more than five times to collect the value in fractions. Just to be certain.
A large part of the value came in by the fourth day. Afterwards the bids dropped drastically — not because interest had diminished, but because someone had understood what I was doing and decided to stop feeding the auction.
"Someone understood the plan."
The question that remained was: how? Nobody had done what I did before. I myself hadn't completely believed it would work when I started — having no racial restriction was something new even to me, a bet I had made without any guarantee of result. And yet, in four days, a major player had simply stepped out.
Not for lack of resources. Not for lack of interest.
By calculation.
Four days was how long it took for someone to map the pattern, identify the strategy, and conclude that feeding the auction only benefited the seller. Whoever it was had arrived at the right conclusion for the right reason.
Intelligent.
Dangerously intelligent.
There was no possibility of accumulating this by killing creatures. Not in three years. Not in ten years at the pace I had been operating. Each stone represented battle, risk, recovery, time. Thirty represented a scale I hadn't reached through force — I had reached it through product.
I was finally in the big leagues.
"Lord… and now? What are we going to do?"
There had been a specific plan I had developed during the months in the laboratory — gradual evolution of the houses and the castle, focus on the higher levels that would unlock mercenaries and war machinery I could command without the logistical costs of living troops. It was the safe path. Predictable. Efficient.
But thirty stones weren't a safe path.
Thirty stones were an opportunity that wouldn't come back.
"I'm going to build the Coliseum. But first — raise the temple level."
Silence.
The kind that comes before the reaction — when what was said is still being processed and the body hasn't yet decided how to respond.
"No…" — Morgana spoke slowly. — "You are still weak. Perhaps we can hunt some creatures in the surrounding area before you take that risk. Build more. Grow first."
Morgana had a point. The Coliseum was a place of incredible opportunities — but the risks were of equal difficulty. The standard path was simple: frenzied consumption of Nectar Stones, physical strengthening until the body stopped being human in any practical sense, and only then enter. It was what everyone did. It was what worked.
I wanted to do it differently.
Livina, who had remained silent while Morgana spoke, finally gave her point of view.
"Lord, I agree with Morgana — going to that place without being strong is madness." — her voice was different. Not provocative. Heavy. — "I used the Coliseum a great deal. I know its benefits better than most. But I know its dangers too."
She paused.
The kind of pause that isn't hesitation — it's weight being carried to the edge before being set down.
"After all… I died there."
The silence returned with a different texture.
It was strange to watch someone speak about their own death with that naturalness. Morgana, who was open about almost everything, had only told me how she died when I asked directly — and even then had paused before answering, as though she was still evaluating whether it was worth sharing. Livina had paused too. But unlike Morgana — it wasn't hesitation. It was the gesture of someone who decides to set something heavy down after carrying it for too long.
That stayed with me. But I needed to act.
"If we invest these stones correctly, I can survive the first obstacle. The Oasis is fair to those who enter for the first time. The rules favor the challenger before they favor the established."
"But you don't need three heroes to enter the Coliseum." — Morgana frowned. — "Two are already enough for entry. Why not use these stones to evolve yourself before risking a third summoning?"
The doubt was legitimate. And I had an answer.
I placed my hand on the ring.
The stone appeared in my palm — small, deep purple, lighter threads pulsing through it with the regularity of something that had been absolute force and hadn't completely forgotten what that felt like.
"I have the third summoning." — I paused. — "You forgot."
Morgana looked at the stone.
Then at me.
Livina said nothing.
But her tail stopped moving — the specific signal of when she had processed something and arrived at a conclusion she had no argument to contest.
Tauros's soul pulsed in my hand.