Chương 44: The Gatehouse Auction

The public square inside the Western Gatehouse was a choked, volatile bottleneck of dust, sweat, and intense financial panic. High-level corporate vanguard patrols from Pixel Rex were stationed at every major limestone pillar, their heavy bronze Naue II swords drawn as their eyes scanned the inbound caravan lines for a single player ID: Etan. A quiet, four-unit foreign trade file slipped smoothly past their perimeter line without triggering a single system warning.

At the head of the file walked a figure draped in the heavy, indigo-dyed wool mantle of a coastal trader from Sidon, his lower face completely masked by an indigo turban, his eyes rimmed with thick black charcoal ash to simulate desert glare-protection. He did not execute a convenient name hack. He opened his active trade stall menu, letting his newly won palace status override his default public handle.

Floating above his head was his official, system-validated administrative title stamped by Sopher Yakin-Ilu in Chapter 42: [Zaku_Artisan_Vendor]. Behind him lumbered three massive, slow-moving figures draped from head to ankle in coarse, heavy flax harvesting robes that smelled of wet straw and damp river clay.

They carried empty, weathered wicker baskets packed with common dirt and broken pottery shards over their shoulders, their heavy, stone-hard steps perfectly disguised by the continuous clatter of donkey carts traversing the unpaved plaza. The operations branch doesn't talk to the legal desk-jockeys, Ethan analyzed from behind his indigo face wrap, his massive fifty-four points of Perception tracking the blue target lines of the Level 35 scouts patrolling the ramparts.

The compliance manager who lost the Ilku tax audit in the ditch didn't share my visual profile because it would prove he got humiliated by a free-tier artisan. In their corporate panic, they see the Zaku tag and assume the palace is clearing its private warehouses. He marched his three shrouded giants straight into the center of the public market square, stopping directly opposite the main Pixel Rex logistics counter.

Behind the cedar desk stood Bochim, his uniform disheveled, his face twisted in a state of high-stakes corporate emergency. Two elite Level 35 guild masters were slamming their fractured, sulphur-caked swords onto the counter, their visors flashing with a rapid succession of red durability warnings.

"Our entire frontline raid rotation is frozen!" the lead vanguard roared, slamming his cracked hilt down.

"The municipal forge fires are completely choked with sulphur slag! Every new casting batch is brittle! If we don't secure high-purity flux cakes to clear the copper within the next hour, our territorial contract with the palace scribes decays, and Merlion Holdings takes the entire northern sector!"

"I've sent six buying macros to the Upper City brokers!" Bochim hissed, his knuckles white as his fingers flew across his ledger screen.

"There is no sulphur flux on the open market! Someone cleared out every scrap of unrefined yellow silt from the tanneries twenty-four hours ago! The current inventory volume on the server sits at absolute zero!" Ethan stepped forward, his bare feet meeting the unpaved mud floor right in front of Bochim's desk, his posture straight and demanding.

"The volume isn't zero, manager," Ethan said, his voice dropped into a deep, foreign, gravelly accent that completely muffled his natural Singaporean cadence. He swiped his hand downward across his visual interface, opening his master market stall slot and locking the [Zaku_Artisan_Vendor] ledger straight onto the public counter.

"Emmett-03_Yotzer, drop the load," Ethan commanded in a low, sharp whisper. The three giant constructs behind him violently threw off their coarse flax robes. Their slate-grey, iron-vitrified ceramic bodies gleamed under the midday sun as they stepped forward, tilting their massive wicker baskets directly onto the public market counters. Clink-clink-clink!

Thousands of uniform, hard-baked, high-density roasted sulphur flux cakes cascaded onto the cedar wood like a yellow mountain, filling the entire gatehouse with a sharp, pungent volcanic reek. Right beside the sulphur, Emmett-01_Oved dumped hundreds of kilograms of raw, ninety-eight percent pure sponge copper nodules, their metallic sheen completely clean of slag inclusions. Bochim's eyes bulged from his sockets, his jaw dropping as his interface instantly locked onto the massive yellow mountain of raw flux.

He saw the Zaku title, saw the indigo robes, and his mind immediately filled in the blanks—he assumed the palace administration was executing a state-backed supply liquidation. He lunged across the desk, his hands hovering inches from the yellow bricks.

"Flux cakes! High-density roasted sulphur! Master vendor... I'll buy the entire manifest right now! Name your price in palace copper!" Every corporate visor in the square flared with an immediate, high-priority system evaluation block: [Public Market Commodity Finalized] Items Offered: High-Purity Roasted sulphur Flux Bricks x450 / Refined Copper Nodules x300 kg. Item Durability Grade: Elite Industrial Structural Grade (0% Slag Inclusions). Seller Status: Zaku (Permanent Municipal Tax Exemption Active).

Transaction Framework: Public Spot Auction.

"I don't handle palace copper pieces, manager," Ethan said, leaning his hands against the counter as his cold, ash-rimmed eyes locked onto Bochim's trembling ledger screen.

"The entire metallurgical infrastructure of the lower ward sits inside these baskets. Your Level 35 swords are snapping, your raid timers are running out, and my tax rating is permanently set at zero percent. The opening bid for the entire processing lot is fifteen Silver Shekels of uncoined Hacksilber scrap weight—or the equivalent in verified corporate contract vouchers. Let the bidding begin." A dead, breathless silence hit the gatehouse plaza like a stone wall.

The corporate managers from Merlion Holdings scrambled forward from the rear of the crowd, their fingers already flying across their private gold-reserve accounts as the high-stakes bidding war erupted right under Bochim's nose. Bochim desperately began inputting frantic counter-offers, completely oblivious to the fact that he was bowing to the very F2P player he had sworn to hunt, pleading to hand over his entire corporate reserve just to survive the squeeze.