The Auction House

At the Stormwind City real estate sales office in Old Town, Young Master Ai checked the one-star junior mage badge he had just obtained and pinned it securely to his left arm. Only then did he dare go inside and find out what housing prices in Stormwind City were like... He was definitely there to look, not buy. With only eight silver coins left in his pocket, how the hell could he buy anything?

In fact, he lasted only three minutes inside before practically fleeing for his life. Thanks to his status as a one-star mage, no one dared show him any disrespect, but the prices sent him running off in tears...

"Lord Mage, there are still some properties for sale here in Old Town. How about this area? The average price is three gold coins per square meter. A basic unit is around a hundred square meters, so after the discount, it's only about 300 gold coins. Isn't that cheap?"

"Not to your liking? Not upscale enough? No problem. Do you know the Garden District? The homes there face the sea, so they have proper ocean views, and they're close to schools as well. They're excellent school-district properties. The price is a little higher, averaging 20 gold per square meter, but they're all villas, at least 500 square meters each. After the discount, they're around 10,000 gold."

"My lord is interested in a shop in the Trade District? Of course. In the busiest part of town, where foot traffic is highest, the average is around ten gold coins per square meter. A medium-sized shop would cost about 1,000 gold coins."

If the prices in gold coins didn't look frightening enough, just convert one gold coin to 10,000 RMB. An ordinary 100-square-meter home in Old Town cost three million, an even bigger rip-off than housing in Nanjing. Shops were even more outrageous. Who could afford ten million for a medium-sized shop?

As for an ocean-view home in the Garden District's school district, that was over 100 million, all right? Who but those bloodsucking nobles had that kind of money?

With only eight silver coins in his pocket, a certain shut-in carried his wounded man's heart to a random inn in Old Town and checked in... His mood was as dark as the sky!

"Honored Lord Mage, how may I help you?" the female bank employee in white gloves asked politely.

This was the southwest corner of Stormwind City's Trade District. The central bank was located here, making this relatively out-of-the-way place a gathering spot for combat professionals. The reason was simple: the bank offered combat professionals very favorable terms on its various services...

Ordinary civilians could use the bank too, but they weren't authorized to use its safes. They could deposit and withdraw money here, but unlike the central banks of later generations, deposits earned no interest. You could withdraw exactly as much as you deposited; the bank was only responsible for keeping it safe. There was no interest at all...

Combat professionals could use their identity cards to access more services. The bank provided each combat professional with a safe of at least ten cubic meters, where they could store valuable items and equipment they didn't need for the time being. Of course, there was a handling fee. If that space wasn't enough, they could spend gold coins to purchase additional safes, but the cost rose geometrically with each one purchased... Even an institution like the bank didn't have unlimited spatial equipment. Resources were limited, and it had to serve combat professionals throughout the country. Naturally, anyone who took up more resources had to pay extra.

The spatial equipment here was completely different from the six-slot bag Aige had looted before. It was pseudo-spatial equipment that required a fixed location and a fixed magic array. It couldn't be moved and wasn't as convenient as true spatial equipment. It simply used the principles of a magic array to forcibly tear into the space of another plane and carve out a section specifically for storage. Although the principles were similar, it cost less and couldn't be moved, making it fundamentally different from true spatial magic... Otherwise, the bank could make a fortune just selling these safes.

Young Master Ai didn't linger at the bank. It held little value for him. The Hero Space he had with him was more than enough for his storage needs. If the bank paid interest on deposits, he might have considered putting some money in once he had it, but the interest here was zero, so there was no point... Besides, for a fellow with only eight coins in his pocket, having money was still a long way off.

Storing equipment was even less worthwhile, since every deposit and withdrawal incurred an additional handling fee. His Hero Space was more convenient for that too... and absolutely safe.

His next stop was his main objective: the auction house!

Like the bank, the auction house was a place where fixed spatial equipment was widely used. When Aige approached the Stormwind City auction house, his first impression was... Have I come to a stock exchange?

The most eye-catching thing was the large screen overhead, whose display kept slowly changing. It showed items selling relatively well at the auction house today, such as copper ingots, peacebloom, linen cloth, light leather, hides, fuses, minor healing potions, various pieces of excellent equipment, and so on. Like a stock market screen continually displaying market prices, it even showed historical trends in transaction prices for passersby to consult.

That wasn't all. Nearly a hundred self-service query machines stood in neat rows throughout the vast trading hall. Combat professionals only had to insert their identity cards for verification, and they could easily use the machines to select whatever items they liked from the auction house's real-time listings...

As you can see, there was one important thing here: a combat professional identity card. Without one, you couldn't use a query machine, which meant ordinary civilians couldn't enjoy that privilege... But that didn't mean they couldn't use the auction house. In fact, dozens of staff members sat at counters to serve civilians who came to trade.

Although civilians couldn't use the machines to search, nothing stopped them from lining up to trade. (The query machines had been installed specifically so combat professionals could use the auction house conveniently; ordinary people simply had to queue. This was another reflection of the class hierarchy.) Generally, though, civilians were mostly sellers, coming to sell raw materials and rarely able to afford anything... They couldn't afford even a single piece of combat professional equipment. Besides, they had no ability to bring out its power.

Since the self-service query machines were so convenient for combat professionals, the hundred-plus machines were more than enough. That was also why the hall's display screen mostly showed real-time prices for low-level raw materials, primarily for the convenience of ordinary people who came to sell them... Ordinary civilians weren't entirely useless; they could still supply the auction house with some things, provided the price was right.

In fact, most of the basic raw materials here came from ordinary people. Low-level herbs like silverleaf and peacebloom, for example, could be gathered by anyone familiar with herbalism. They didn't require much skill, and even apprentices could pick them.

Some civilians who studied medicine or worked in related fields had the skills to gather them, even if they weren't combat professionals. Herbs generally grew in the wild, however, so finding them depended on luck. The wilderness was too dangerous for civilians, which meant the herbs that appeared at the auction house mostly came in small quantities. Civilians only regarded them as extra income to help support their families... Much the same was true of most other raw materials.

"Sir, if you're here to sell something, please line up and wait for a staff member!"

An employee at the entrance politely stopped him. "If you want to use a self-service query machine over here, please show me your combat professional identity card!"

Aige nodded in understanding. The employee was only doing his job, not looking down on him. Huge numbers of people came and went every day, and Aige was a new face, so naturally the employee didn't recognize him. Stopping him was also meant to prevent a civilian from accidentally offending a combat professional... In a place with such a strict hierarchy, perhaps it even served to protect civilians.

Young Master Ai took out the one-star mage badge he had just obtained and pinned it where it belonged. Then he took out his combat professional identity card and gave it a wave in front of the employee...

"My apologies, Lord Mage. Please forgive my earlier rudeness! This way, please!"

Aige waved a hand, found an unoccupied query machine on his own, and inserted his card to try it out...

The interface was very user-friendly, with lots of subcategories that made it easy to find the information he needed: weapons, equipment, potions, raw materials, and so on. He could even enter his own search terms...

"Silverleaf!"

After typing in the keyword "silverleaf," Aige gently pressed the search button...

The machine soon displayed the results on the screen. At fifty rows per page, dozens of pages of silverleaf appeared before him. After sorting them by price, he found that silverleaf was very cheap, averaging ten copper coins per plant. It was practically being given away...

He also searched for "peacebloom" and "bruiseweed" and found that both herbs were plentiful and very cheap... More than enough for Aige to level up his alchemy.

"Icecap!"

This was another relatively rare herb. Unfortunately, Aige saw only a little over twenty rows in the search results, with fewer than 200 plants in stock! Unlike the low-level herbs, however, herbs of this grade were rarely sold one or two at a time. Nearly all were sold in stacks of twenty...

That was easy to understand. Civilians could gather low-level herbs, but high-level herbs were almost entirely monopolized by high-level combat professionals. Whether it was the required gathering skill or the dangers of the wilderness, neither was something ordinary civilians could handle.

"Black Lotus!"

Only three rows of data appeared on the screen, for a total of seven flowers...

The price was very high, at one gold each-the equivalent of 10,000 yuan! Of course, compared with the game's price of 20 gold per flower, it was still much lower. But unlike in the game, where inflation was obvious, one gold had very good purchasing power here. Aige checked when the auction listings had been posted. They had already been up for more than ten hours...

What did that mean?