75. The Sword Breaker (above)

Velu had no intention of lingering in the auction room, but carefully put the scorching bow behind his back, returned to his seat, whispered a few words to Jambach and got up and walked out of the auction room, his slender figure wrapped in cloth and looking mysterious. The auctioneer, Koro, was shouting from the central platform about how good the next lot was, but I didn't even hear a word of it, my eyes followed Viru's figure until he disappeared at the doors of the auction hall, then I let out a long breath. It was only when his silhouette disappeared at the entrance to the auction hall that my violently beating heart calmed down.

I gave him a mischievous face, which made him smile, and then he made a quick gesture to take care of Koko and left without a sound.

I always felt that there was an aristocratic air in Jon Bach's bones, that he had the virtues of calmness, competence, fairness and humility, and that you could feel it without even having to show it, just by seeing him standing there. I think he's a great guy and I can trust him as a friend or whatever. There was nothing wrong with Sister Gogo's eye for this, and although for the time being it looked like the magician's rank was half a rank higher than the equivalent warrior, Strong Bach was definitely the kind of man who had potential, and I finally didn't hold back, cocking my head to Sister Gogo and saying, "Sister, when did you go public?"

"..." Sister Gogo was a bit uncertain, obviously not understanding my question.

I ambled over to her ear and told her, "You and Uncle Qiangba, when did you develop such a close relationship? Are you going to marry him?"

"Bam!" I was hit on the head with a solid chestnut, causing me to scream "Ouch".

"What are kids asking?" Sister Gogo ignored me and looked towards Koro's solo performance on the auction stage.

Although they occasionally fought with each other for mid-level magical herbs or rare ores, they were sensible enough to keep their prices within a profitable range, and they wanted almost everything except slaves, food and dried meat.

Speaking of slaves, there are also a large number of slaves in the orc tribes, most of them are wandering dwarves or simply captives of the grey dwarf bandits, these slaves have chains on their legs and carry a long whip to herd sheep for the orc nobles, sometimes they also do other chores, but the dwarves are better at burrowing, once they leave the cave they are greedy and lazy even if they become slaves, and often They are a very poor race of slaves. The most important thing to remember is that there are other races, such as the humans and elves who are stolen by slavers, the barbarians in the snowy tundra or the lizardmen in the southern rainforests, and it is said that the beast taming skills of the orcs were passed down to the lizardmen in the swamp country, who are the natural beast tamers. As for the Demons of Hell or the Ghosts of the Undead, the history of these races is written on parchment and they have not appeared on Roland for at least 300 years.

A slave was also sold at this auction, which finally opened my eyes to the fact that the slave for sale at the auction was really something else. He was almost naked and strong, except for a piece of linen around his waist, and he was bound with black iron chains thicker than my arms, with his hands tied behind him and heavy shackles hanging from his feet, which I think weighed several hundred pounds. He had a shaved head, huge brass earrings hanging from his ears, thicker than the largest bracelets I had ever seen, and a fierce-looking face tattooed with a greenish pattern, which Koro described as a barbarian warrior of the icy tundra, one who had killed and seen blood in battle and was said to be able to smash a one-horned bison to death with one punch.

But I noticed that for the first time, the human merchants were finally silent en masse and wouldn't even look at it. It was eventually bought by an orc chief for a starting price of three gold coins.

I was a little surprised and asked Sister Gogo why.

Sister Gogo knew a lot and explained to me, "This kind of war slave is very brutal in nature and will not do any work, eats very large amounts of food and will not hesitate to run away whenever he has the chance. Not to mention how much hardship he would have to go through along the way to transport him back to the Green Empire, such a war slave sells for more than even the food consumed along the way in the Green Empire, and only a madman would buy this thing."

The auction also included thirty tons of wheat flour, apparently brought up to the Pai Plateau by some small human caravan, but at a slightly higher price of six coppers per kilo, the three tons of wheat flour were worth only eighteen gold coins, and were finally sold by the orc shaman Charuk for twenty gold.

I felt as if this group of people had come for the grain, and after taking delivery of the wheat flour, they, like Velu, did not even want to stay in the auction room for a moment, and the old shaman, Shaluk, left the auction room with the young warrior of the War Wolf clan and a group of subordinates. Otherwise, a small auction would not have required the presence of a shaman second only to the chief of the tribe, and just to buy the wheat flour, which according to common sense is only a matter for the tribe's ordinary procurement, but it was necessary to rely on an elderly shaman, which shows that the War Wolf tribe is very eager for this wheat flour!

A dozen more items were auctioned off by the human merchants in quick succession, and I saw that although Kiger was looking at them with great interest, she never looked at them carefully, obviously not the items she was interested in. The crossbow I was looking for never appeared either, leaving me a little disillusioned. I hadn't slept all night last night, and although I had spent the morning in meditation to recover, and then had a nice hot bath, I still felt too tired to concentrate on what was going on in the auction room.

At this point, the four waiters came up to the stage one after another and placed the trays of items on the stand in turn. Look, there's something interesting served up this time!"

To be called interesting by Kiger was not easy in itself, and I took one look at it and thought it was strange, yet after that moment my eyes never left the four wooden trays on the stand. Inside the four wooden trays in turn lay a round shield cracked with a deep crack, a small round shield made of bronze carved with an antique pattern and a light blue magic crystal set in the centre of the shield, but on its own the shield was worn smooth and discernible, with only patches of rust showing through the deep lines, indicating that the small shield was of a certain age and on the verge of being scrapped, as the crack that ran through almost the entire It was only the edge of one side that was not cut by a sharp object that prevented the shield from being split in two.

The second tray contains a broken sword, with only the blue hilt, arm guard and a blade of less than ten centimetres, the entire sword having been broken from the middle of the blade down towards the hand guard. Even the hilt and arm guard have some ornate patterns, and one can tell by looking at it that it must have been a valuable magical rune sword before it was broken. Unfortunately, the break was complete and there was no other half of the blade on the tray, which completely cut off the possibility of repair.

The third tray contained a piece of leather armour that had been completely slashed across the chest. The red-coloured upper half of the fire lizard leather armour had an irreparable sword wound from the left side of the heart down to the right side of the ribs. I don't understand how such a tattered piece of clothing has any value on the auction block.

The fourth tray contained a hunting rifle, a weapon that shocked my perception of the magical world, with a single calibre barrel about the thickness of a duck's egg. The stock was carved from a dark grey wood, and the mixture of the two contrasting colours of silver and dark grey gave the short-barrelled shotgun a very violent look, especially as the intricate magical pattern engraved on its body suggested that it was a magical weapon. No damage could be seen to the item.

The orc auctioneer, Koro, circled around the improvised stand of wooden square tables twice and then said to the curious people around, "These four items on the stand all have some flaws, it is said that the owner hunted and killed a big leader of a grey dwarf bandit group to seize these four pieces of magical equipment, unfortunately during the battle these four items were damaged extremely badly. This is a bronze shield with magic crystals, unfortunately the magic pattern of this shield has been damaged and the 'Petrified Skin' magic skill attached to it can no longer be used. The owner of the item does not want to take the risk, that's why he is selling this shield, so the starting bid for this broken bronze shield is three gold, such a piece of magic crystal if in the magic crystal market probably sells for about ten gold, I wonder if there is anyone at the scene who is willing to take some risk and auction this shield off?"

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