Chapter 80: The bracelet of absolute

The room was in a silence so absolute that you could hear a pin drop.

​Nobody wanted to make the first bid. Stepping forward to set the opening price was equivalent to sticking one’s neck onto the chopping block. In exchanges like this, the pioneer was almost always targeted—their opening offer scrambled over, mocked, and ruthlessly undermined by the others. It was an embarrassing position to be in. Someone could easily match your opening bid with a dismissive wave of their hand, instantly rendering your initial presence trivial.

​Unlike the chaotic public auctions—where people screamed out bids, hurled insults, and threatened each other’s families—this private council gathering operated on an entirely different level of decorum. It was held exclusively among peers. Here, intimidation tactics and political pressure were useless; every individual sitting in the room shared the same elevated standing and allied status. Threats were meaningless when everyone possessed equal authority.

​In this room, only pure wealth could speak.

​Yet, despite the unwritten etiquette of waiting for someone else to swallow the bait, patience was a finite resource. One man in particular had reached his absolute limit.

​CRACK!

​The sudden, violent impact of a hand slamming against the table shattered the silence. Caesar leaned forward, his eyes burning undisguised irritation as he glared around.

​"Are you all going to sit there forever?" Caesar snapped, his voice booming. "You’ve reached this age, yet you’re still playing the same pathetic game of the fisherman waiting for a nibble! It’s always the same with you old coots—never changing an inch. Fine! If none of you have the spine for it, I’ll take the damn bait."

​With a flick of his wrist, Caesar toke an item directly from his inventory and slammed it on the table.

​The container itself was simple—an unadorned glass vial devoid of intricate carvings—but the substance swirling within immediately captured every eye in the room. It was a pale, incandescent gold liquid that flowed with an ethereal, starlight-like viscosity. It shimmered in the ambient light, casting soft golden reflections across the table.

​"Five drops of Aura Essence," Caesar shouted, sweeping his arm across the table. "That’s my opening bid. Now, let’s see if the rest of you actually came here to trade or just to stare at each other!"

​Among mid-tier combatants, Aura Essence was a vital resource dropped exclusively upon slaying mid rank beasts. To gather it, a person had to hunt creatures ranging from the Master Rank up to the Super Grandmaster Rank(6th Rank).possessing evolved combat intelligence, superior equipment,and multiple skills,they are far more difficult to kill than Low rank creature with in the same rank.

​ The higher the rank of the slain creature, the greater the quantity. For a standard Master Rank, a person might need to slay over a hundred just to condense a single drop of essence. Only at the Super Grandmaster Rank was a drop virtually guaranteed.

​Furthermore, Aura Essence served as the universal hard currency for high-level transactions between players. Beyond its trade value, its functional utility in battle was immense. Where low-rank players relied on rudimentary Energy Orbs to heal their pawns, mid-tier powerhouses consumed Aura Essence during critical moments of combat to instantly replenish drained stamina, mend life-threatening wounds, and restore depleted energy reserves in a heartbeat.

​For any standard mid-tier player, five drops of Aura Essence represented a massive fortune—a reward reaped only after surviving dozens of life-or-death encounters.

​To the ordinary populace, Caesar’s opening bid might have seemed generous. But every individual seated around this table was a Transcendent being. To entity-level existences who had breached the limits of mortality, hunting mid-tier beasts was not much different from stepping on ants along the roadside.

​For an Elder of their caliber, securing five drops of Aura Essence was something they could accomplish in a single afternoon as a mere side objective while pursuing far greater targets. Using such a trivial amount to initiate a high-stakes bidding war for something as rare as an Enhancement Stone was practically an insult to their intelligence.

​Caesar caught the subtle sneers flickering across the Elders’ faces, but he merely chuckled, thoroughly unbothered. He leaned back into his couch, crossing his legs with a self-satisfied grin. He had broken the ice, and that was all he cared about.

​Now that the dam had burst, the quiet auction erupted into a rapid, fierce contest.

​"Ten drops of Aura Essence and a High-Grade Mana Crystal!" one Elder called out immediately.

​"Fifteen drops, plus a batch of Regeneration Pills!" another countered without hesitation.

​Bids flew across the table in rapid succession. The price escalated exponentially with every passing second, several Elders slowly shook their heads and withdrew from the bidding, unwilling to part with their more prized possessions.

​Eventually, the chaotic flurry of offers slowed to a crawl, leaving only three contenders standing in the arena: Caesar, Elder Edigar, and Jacob.

​Seeing that the bidding had reached a stalemate where simple quantities of currency were no longer driving the trade forward, Elder Edigar sighed softly and stood up.

​"Alright," Edigar said, his voice calm and measured as he looked between Caesar and Jacob. "Let’s stop wasting time with minor increases and make things simple."

​Edigar reached into his inventory and produced a heavy, solid metallic object. He set it gently upon the table. It was a thick, antique bracelet forged from a strange bronze-like alloy, its surface densely inscribed with glowing runic patterns that pulsed with a faint, steady rhythm.

​Rather than shouting out its function, Edigar slid the bracelet across the stone surface toward Smith. In auctions of this nature, when unique artifacts were put on the line, it fell upon a the other party to inspect the item and evaluate its worth.

​Smith picked up the bronze artifact and inspected it.

​Name:bracelet of absolute

Description: When the wearer is subjected to a sudden, fatal, or unavoidable lethal strike, the artifact automatically disintegrate and triggers a absolute defensive barrier around the user Completely negates and blocks the incoming attack regardless of the attacker’s Rank or power output. The invulnerability barrier remains active for a maximum duration of 30 seconds

​When Smith finished reading the system description, his hands trembled slightly, and a look of shock washed over his face.

​A life-saving artifact!

​To a layman, a duration of thirty seconds might sound brief. But to combatants operating at the Transcendent rank—where battles were decided in microseconds and a single slip-in-guard meant instant death—a full half-minute of complete, rank-ignoring invulnerability was an eternity. It was more than enough time to break free from an inescapable domain, swallow high-tier healing potions, activate a spatial escape scroll, or completely turn the tables on an unsuspecting assassin.

​The moment Smith read the item’s properties aloud to the council, a collective hush fell over the room.

​The other Elders looked at Edigar with expressions ranging from disbelief to bitter resignation. Edigar’s move was nothing short of ruthless. By laying down a genuine life-saving artifact of that caliber, he had effectively shut down all competition for the first available enhancement slot. Nobody in their right mind would attempt to outbid an item that offered a literal extra life.

​Edigar leaned back, observing the quiet consensus of the room with a sense of quiet satisfaction. He knew he had taken the lead, and he had no regrets about parting with such a treasure.

​He didn’t bring out the bracelet purely out of arrogance or a desire to show off. He had a deeply personal motive. Edigar had a stubborn, beloved great-granddaughter who spent every moment nagging him. She was nearly eighteen years old, approaching time for her awakening, and she dreamed of becoming a chess player every single day. The entire Council was well aware of how much Edigar doted on the girl. To secure this enhancement slot for her, he was willing to trade away whatever it took.

​With Edigar claiming the first slot without further contest, only one remaining enhancement slot was left up for grabs.

​And for that final slot, the battle came down to two men: Caesar and Jacob.

​However, the dynamic between them was painfully unequal. Although Jacob held the title of nominal leader for their operational group, his personal cultivation was still at the peak of the Super Grandmaster Rank. He had not yet taken that final, monumental leap into true Transcendence.

​In a setting where raw wealth was directly tied to one’s ability to hunt high-level creatures, a Super Grandmaster simply could not compare to the accumulated foundations of a genuine Transcendent being like Caesar. Despite Jacob’s fierce arguments, counter-offers, and desperate attempts to bundle multiple lower-tier items together, the sheer gap in their resource capacity was too vast to bridge.

​As Caesar casually threw down a rare item that comfortably surpassed all of Jacob’s combined offers, the conclusion became obvious to everyone present.

​Caesar grinned triumphantly, raising his hand toward Smith to finalize the trade under the approving nods of the surrounding Elders.

​To the side, Jacob stood frozen. His face bearing an expression of helpless—looking like a man forced to watch his beloved wife dragged to the public. The opportunity to secure an enhancement slot was right in front of him, yet it was slipping through his fingers purely because he lacked the raw capital of a Transcendent.

​Seeing Caesar’s mocking, victorious smirk, something inside Jacob hardened his heart, Jacob and steped forward.

​"WAIT!" Jacob roared, his voice cutting through the room. "EVERYBODY, BEFORE YOU FINALIZE THE TRANSACTION—PLEASE, HEAR ME OUT!"

​The sudden, frantic interruption caused every Elder in the room to freeze. Several Elders perked up their ears ; interrupting at this time was abnormal so they wanted to watch the show.

​Yet, surprisingly, Caesar did not fly into a rage.He turned his gaze toward Jacob, his eyes flashing with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.

​"Alright, Jacob," Caesar said softly, his tone strangely quiet as he rested his chin on his hand. " We are all listening... let’s see what you have to say to turn this tide."