Chapter 701: Deal

Grey didn’t stick around to hear what Breejara or Muse Incorporated decided. He turned away from the podium and stepped onto the teleportation platform, while his name still hung over the auction hall as the winner of the Integration Challenge, stamped there by the Genesis System for every single person watching to see.

That was all Grey actually cared about.

Whatever Muse did with the Rank Up! afterward wouldn’t change the result. They might have plenty of influence outside, but this wasn’t the outside world. In the Genesis Games, Muse Incorporated could sponsor auctions, plaster its name across banners and apparently breed spider women specifically to piss Grey off. However, it couldn’t casually erase something the Genesis System itself had acknowledged.

Who said he couldn’t be patient? Grey’s smile slowly widened as the light swallowed him.

He’d get it back in blood soon enough.

The moment Grey reappeared in the private room, he was greeted by so many angry faces that he almost laughed before anyone said a word. Sabrina looked furious and Amunet wasn’t much better. Even James had stopped eating long enough to glare at the auction stage, as though Aelthar might somehow feel it.

Grey laughed anyway.

"What are you all so angry about? Watch this."

The next auction platform was already rising. Grey didn’t bother checking what was on it. The instant the bidding interface opened, he put in a bid.

Sabrina stared at him. "Grey."

"Shh."

"You don’t even know what it is."

"I don’t give a fuck."

That much became more and more obvious as Grey kept raising the price every time someone challenged him. He barely glanced at the item description while Breejara tried to explain whatever expensive treasure he had apparently decided he couldn’t live without.

The crowd caught on fast. Judging by the laughter spreading through the hall, everyone understood that Grey’s newest financial strategy had somehow managed to be even less responsible than the one Breejara had spent all night mocking.

Eventually, most of the bidders dropped out. Only Grey and a private bubble he didn’t recognize were left.

Grey glanced at it. "Who’s that?"

Axion-9’s rings shifted as he followed Grey’s gaze. "Members of the Asterith Race."

Grey looked back at him, waiting. Axion was more than happy to keep going.

"They possess one of the original Betting Favorites and are among the wealthiest High Races participating in this iteration of the Games. Their territories contain methods of harvesting stellar material directly from living stars, which has allowed them to accumulate resources on a scale most planetary civilizations cannot approach."

Grey studied the figures inside the distant bubble. Their bodies were made of angular crystal that caught the light around them and scattered it through themselves.

"Great. I’ve trolled enough rockmen for one lifetime."

"They are not rockmen."

Grey sighed. He had a feeling he knew what was coming.

And as expected, Axion-9 kept going. "The crystal you are seeing is condensed stellar ore, not planetary mineral matter. Their bodies form from material extracted under the pressure and energy conditions of stars, so referring to them as rockmen would be roughly equivalent to calling a Para Bot a kitchen appliance."

Grey looked over at him. "I would call you worse."

"I am aware."

Axion’s rings rotated once, and then he carried on as though that exchange had never happened.

"Many races you would classify as rockmen are believed to descend from primitive branches related to the Asterith, so there is some distant relationship, but the Asterith themselves are not considered part of that classification. Their Betting Favorite is particularly—"

Grey waved a hand. "Don’t care."

Axion-9 stopped.

The details really didn’t matter to Grey right now. Whoever was sitting in that bubble could be the favorite to win the entire Genesis Games, the grandson of some cosmic emperor, or a sentient chunk of space gravel with more money than sense. None of it changed what Grey had decided to do.

Sabrina, however, shook her head. "Keep going."

Axion-9 turned toward her.

"He’ll need to know eventually." Sabrina continued.

Grey heard that much. But, by then, the price had jumped again, and his attention was back on the bidding interface.

Whatever Axion explained to Sabrina after that turned into background noise. Grey kept pushing the number higher until the Asterith bubble finally dimmed and Breejara announced him as the winner.

The next item showed up almost immediately. Grey bid again.

Breejara stopped halfway through her introduction.

"Grey Temolt, darling, I haven’t even told you what it does."

Grey raised the price again without even waiting for a second bid.

The crowd laughed, but Breejara’s smile was starting to tighten while Grey just kept bidding.

That item ended up his as well. When a third platform rose, his name was among the bidders before Breejara had even finished saying what it was once again.

By then, even she had stopped pretending she wasn’t getting irritated. Though, there wasn’t much she could actually do about it, so long as Grey kept following the auction rules.

Muse Incorporated might be running the auction, but it didn’t control the Genesis Games.

More importantly, Grey wasn’t some random Candidate spending money he could never pay back. Whatever Breejara thought of him personally, his Dominion Class Mech Tech certification gave him access to an almost absurdly deep line of recognized credit. That was especially true now that the auction house had already accepted his blueprint package as the night’s headliner.

That said, his credit wasn’t infinite. Grey knew that too.

He watched another bid come in and entered a higher one. Then, he suddenly turned to Axion-9.

"Let me use your credit."

Axion-9 went completely still. Grey had started to recognize that as the Para Bot version of blinking.

"For what in exchange?"

Grey grinned. "I’ll give you a copy of the blueprint package that knocked your mech out of the headliner spot."

Several of Axion’s floating components shifted at once. For something without a face, he gave himself away pretty easily.

"Continue."

"Limited version, eighty-percent SA-index. You can’t resell it, redistribute it, or hand copies to anybody else, and you’ll sign a Genesis contract locking all of that in."

Axion-9 stared at him and didn’t interrupt.

"Whatever I spend using your credit, I repay in full by the end of the auction, plus ten percent." Grey continued.

The room went quiet. Even Sabrina, who had been ready to strangle him a minute ago, was watching to see how this played out.

Grey leaned back into the couch.

"You get the blueprint you’ve been dying to look at, ten percent on whatever I borrow, plus the satisfaction of watching me financially terrorize everybody who annoys me, including your favorite enemy."

Axion-9’s rings started spinning faster. One would have thought a Para Bot would at least pretend to think it over.

Grey’s grin widened. "Interested?"

The Para Bot didn’t hesitate.

"Deal."