To have a representative.
With a group of friends not bringing any outsiders, it was easy to convince one to bring Rogan along.
So as the venue filled, the auction began.
A woman entered the stage, trying to get everybody excited.
"As everyone knows we are starting small, with increasingly rare treasures. We have a total of 234 items submitted, out of 781 hunters. So let's begin." The lady spoke and the curtains were pulled aside.
Revealing a stone dagger, ancient looking with Nen script all around it.
"This was found in the Entlek area where the ancient Horvat tribe used to exist a hundred years ago. The script is non-functional…" The lady introduced the item, Roman scrutinized the knife from a far.
Making finger glases with his hands and Nen. A technique Isaac Netero used in the chimera ant ark to see farther, specifically to study the ants nest.
Now Roman was using it to study an ancient dagger, but he wasn't interested, maybe if the scripts were unique or usable.
But Roman recognized the scripts and even deduced their function.
A poison injecting script.
"The starting bid for this piece will be a hundred million Jenni, with a bare minimum bid increase of a million Jenni." The lady spoke. "So starting at one hundred million Jenni!"
"One hundred and one million"
"One hundred and ten million"
"…"
"Sold for two hundred and thirty million." The lady spoke and the curtains closed.
"Our next item comes from the Dictor Desert, found under a massive dune." The lady spoke and the curtain parted again, revealing a large dirt ball.
"This has been verified as a mutated colossal sand worm egg, crossed with a giant dung bug during migration. Its unknown if it will ever hatch, and has been in its current form for over three decades." The lady explained.
After all such a rare creature would be highly valuable, but it seems the mutation for unknown reasons has halted the growth of the creature.
Roman wasn't very interested especially since the soul of the egg was abysmally weak.
"The starting bid for this piece will be again a hundred million Jenni, with a bare minimum bid increase of a million Jenni." The lady spoke. "So starting at one hundred million Jenni!"
"One hundred and one million"
"One hundred and ten million"
"…"
"Sold for three hundred million!" The lady announced, following the curtains closure once again.
"Our next item…"
Three dozen items were shown, but none interested Roman. All old and uninteresting relics, none of their prices reaching over five hundred million Jenni.
It's important to remember Jenni was worth a hundred times less than dollars from earth. So really the items hadn't gone over five million dollars to put everything into perspective.
Though finally something appeared that interested Roman.
"Our next item is from the ancient ruins of the Krisp Kingdom from a thousand years ago."
The curtains revealed a small metallic bead.
"This is the bead of the king's jester, the very jester some of you may have heard of. When the king was assassinated, this jester was the one to execute the assassin and then retired from being a jester. Becoming the kingdoms executor, making a fool out of each and every traitor." The item had a personal story to go along with it.
But what interested Roman was he could feel a strong soul from the bead. While small it was strong.
"The starting bid for this piece will be five hundred million Jenni, with a bare minimum bid increase of five million Jenni." The lady spoke. "So starting at five hundred million Jenni!"
"Five hundred and five million"
"five hundred and fifty million"
Roman waited, every item before hand had doubled int price with a few reaching three times the original starting five.
"One billion fifty million, going once."
Roman finally bid, alerting Rogan. Through he soul make, an ability Rogan had learned of for this situation.
The teen raised the paddle, already knowing how to bid, and different paddle signals.
"One billion one hundred and fifty million." Rogan increased the bid a hundred million.
"One billion one hundred and fifty million, going once."
But the last bidder didn't give up.
"One billion two hundred million."
Though Roman didn't hesitate to nudge Rogan again.
"One billion three hundred million."
He added another hundred million.
This time the previous bidder hesitated.
"One billion three hundred million, going once."
"One billion three hundred million, going twice."
Then the original bidder raised their paddle.
"One billion three hundred and fifty million."
But Roman continued without hesitation.
"One billion four hundred million."
This time the original bidder stopped, and Roman won the item.
Rogan's paddle number was marked down for the price bid by someone behind the scenes.
A few more items went up untill another item apeared that interested Roman.
"Our next item is from the extreme dew spring, found in the heart of the region."
The curtains revealed a clear gourd full of a misty liquid.
Roman wanted to buy interesting ingredients for Menchi. She was his greatest ally, and a quite useful one allowing him to grow strong much faster than he expected.
Winning the item for three billion, Roman won a dozen more similar items. Draining his funds by 80 billion.
Though the item that appeared next surprised him, though it shouldn't have.
"This next item is a creation from one of our very own. A rising star in the association. Ging Freeces, a newly appointed 2 star hunter."
The curtains revealed what Roman expected, a copy of greed island, eight memory cards and game rings. The whole set.
"This is a game called Greed Island, made specifically for hunters. Where hunters can be transported directly in the game, just know survival isn't guaranteed."
"The starting bid for this piece will be one billion Jenni, with a bare minimum bid increase of ten million Jenni." The lady spoke. "So starting at one billion Jenni!"
"One billion and ten million."
"One billion one hundred million
"…"
"Five billion."
The price skyrocketed after some details were revealed about the game, not to mention this was the first one to be officially sold.
The other ninety nine copies were supposed to be sold to unknown preorders sometime, unknown buy this year.
So this was the only one on the market that couldn't be preordered.
Roman wouldn't let this opportunity slip by, he knew how expensive they could be.
Nudging Rogan, Rogan used a unique paddle signal to double the price.
"Ten billion."
This silenced the auditorium, everybody looking at Rogan.
It was already crazy that the price increased by five times, now some one was willing to buy it at ten times its original price.
"Ten billion, going once."
"Ten billion, going twice."
Nobody interfered, everyone gave up.
"Ten billion, going thrice."
"Sold."
More items were auctioned and sold, Roman bought a few, whenever he bid he bid to win. Which was probably a bad strategy for, people would probably pick up on It and take advantage of it.
Roman bought an item with functional scripts, and even a part of a divine inscription.
Much rarer, so only a part of a real divine inscription was auctioned. Meanwhile there were a few script objects sold, but Roman only bought one.
Divine inscriptions were different from scripts, divine inscriptions directly strengthened Nen and abilities. This was performed by the aid of the environment.
While scripts could affect objects, making them stronger, weaker or other things. This was done with a persons Nen.
The last item Roman bought was a purple jar from an ancient ruin that was sealing a weird radiation power.
Roman had no reason to buy it, but he could and was so rich. He felt he would never be able to use all his money if he didn't buy something he didn't need.
But Roman planned to use it, it wouldn't just collect dust.
Roman wanted to see how he could use it, he felt it had a lot of potential.
Watching the end of the auction, everybody was a little tired, but this was the most important part of the auction, so energy was high.
As the extremely unique, rare and special items were auctioned Roman didn't find anything he was interested in.
But he saw a person he was interested in.
Glancing at the item being bided on.
Most of the girls were captivated by the beauty of a large dark gem, sparkling like the stars at night.
"70 billion."
"80 billion."
The price was the highest yet and growing, starting from forty billion and already doubled.
Roman didn't glance at Menchi, who was similarly captivated or even thought of her.
But a similarly small figure in the middle of the auditorium with two blonde pigtails.
'This could be a good opportunity to earn a favor.' Roman thought.
He knew Biscuit was strong and would be in certain places that would be beneficial to have her help. They would no doubt run into one another.
If Roman couldn't spend all his money on items, he would certainly do it for favors.
Communicating with Rogan, the teen raised his paddle.
"100 billion."
But people were still strongly bidding, until it reached the 150 billion mark.
"150 billion."
"155 billion."
"160 billion."