Chapter 702: Grey’s Revenge

The bids kept coming, and Grey kept winning.

At first, people still tried to test him. A few private rooms pushed prices up by several million Blue Credits, and some held on long enough that Breejara thought she had the start of another real bidding war. However, every one of them eventually came to the same conclusion as Grey kept raising without the slightest hesitation.

There was no point.

Grey’s name kept showing up, the number kept climbing, and nothing about the way he acted suggested he was anywhere near his limit. Challenging him directly didn’t look very appealing either.

Everyone in the hall had just watched him walk into a Synari Integration Challenge against Lyssara-0, one of the eight Betting Favorites, and embarrass her so badly she hadn’t even touched her own item.

Before tonight, Grey Temolt had been the strange eighth Betting Favorite from a Cracked World. He was the human who had somehow forced his way into a category full of monsters backed by ancient races, absurd bloodlines and civilizations with more history than Earth could wrap its head around.

Now, the audience had watched him stand across from one of those monsters in her own specialty and beat her so fast that most of them still didn’t understand what had happened.

Respect was a funny thing. Grey had learned a long time ago that it didn’t require anyone to like you. Sometimes, all it took was for people to understand that fucking with you was a bad investment.

This was what he kept trying to get the others to understand. The way to winning wasn’t being humble and lowering your head. It never had been.

These people would let him do whatever the fuck he wanted because they were scared of him.

The result? By the time the next item came up, Grey won it for less than half of what similar treasures had been going for earlier in the night. Two items after that, he barely had to go past the starting price at all, even though Breejara spent almost the entire bidding window hyping up the treasure, its history, the civilization that made it and every reason anyone should stop sitting on their hands.

Nobody moved.

Grey finally checked his available credit, and he nearly laughed when the number popped up.

Available Credit: 1,000,000,000 Blue Credits

"A billion?"

He had known the auction had given him an absurd amount to work with after his certification and the headliner change. He just hadn’t bothered to check the exact figure. Somehow, after everything he’d already bought tonight, his total spending hadn’t even crossed 100 million Blue Credits.

Grey glanced at the separate line Axion-9 had just opened up for him.

Available Credit: 500,000,000 Blue Credits

That was only half of Grey’s own limit, which was odd, considering Axion-9 had been operating at this level for far longer than he had. Grey figured it had something to do with his blueprint package replacing Axion’s mech as the headliner. Either way, he was going to use it all if he had to.

Grey’s grin slowly widened as he looked toward the stage. He’d be damned if he didn’t spend every fucking penny of it and fuck Muse Incorporated ten ways to Sunday.

The next item opened at 3 million Blue Credits, and Grey bid immediately. The one after that started at 5 million, then another at 7. Even when the auction finally reached treasures with starting prices over 10 million, his name kept appearing so fast that Breejara barely had time to finish introducing them.

She tried everything.

Breejara prowled across the stage on all eight legs, calling out wealthy private rooms by name, reminding the audience that chances like this might not come around again for years, and insulting people just enough to poke at their pride. None of it worked very well once everyone understood that Grey wasn’t bidding by any normal logic.

Then, the first auction ended without a single competing offer. That was what finally made her hosting smile tighten.

"Sold to Grey Temolt at the minimum bid."

Most of the items up tonight weren’t contestant submissions like Grey’s blueprints or Axion-9’s mech. Those made up only a small part of the inventory. Muse Incorporated had sponsored, acquired or otherwise supplied the overwhelming majority of the treasures Breejara was presenting.

And that sponsorship wasn’t charity. Muse Incorporated had paid heavily to take control of the introductory auction, betting that the competitive atmosphere of Arc II would drive prices far beyond the Genesis System’s minimum valuations.

Every extra bidder raised the return on the assets they’d put up. With enough wealthy races fighting over the same treasures, those profits could climb to numbers that made what Grey was spending look like pocket change.

Grey was wrecking that entire model.

To be fair to Muse, 1.5 billion Blue Credits was probably little more than a rounding error in their books. How much Grey could personally spend wasn’t the real problem.

The problem was what they’d already paid. Muse had spent well beyond that amount outbidding Best Of for the right to sponsor this auction, and they’d done it specifically because Grey’s actions in Arc I had done so much damage to their public image. Letting a competitor take over the opening event of Arc II would have been a disaster.

On top of that, this auction wasn’t just another business venture. The Genesis System was grading them.

If Muse performed well, they could make back what they’d paid for the position and earn even more from whatever rewards the System handed out. If they performed poorly, that original loss could be stacked with System penalties, turning what should have been a public-relations recovery into yet another disaster with Grey Temolt’s name stapled to it.

Normally, the obvious fix would have been to raise the starting bids until Grey couldn’t scoop up items at a discount anymore. Unfortunately, Muse Incorporated didn’t control those numbers. The Genesis System set the minimum valuations and starting prices itself, based on the treasures being sold.

Everything inside the Games came with give and take.

Muse had enough influence to sponsor the auction, organize its inventory, provide the venue and put Breejara at the center of it all. However, that influence didn’t stretch to rewriting System valuations whenever the numbers became inconvenient. Worse, the Genesis System had only gotten harder to manipulate lately, leaving Muse fewer ways to quietly tilt things back in its favor.

Another item appeared, and Grey’s bid landed almost instantly. The few wealthy factions that might have challenged him just watched.

By now, even they understood the problem. Grey wasn’t some loud Cracked World human pretending he belonged next to the Betting Favorites anymore. Anyone thinking about a duel had to ask themselves the obvious question first...

If they picked combat, could they actually fight a Betting Favorite?

The answer was almost certainly not a fucking chance in hell.

Only another Betting Favorite could reasonably stand across from one without it looking suicidal. Even they had now seen what happened when Lyssara tried to drag Grey into a field where she should have held every advantage.

Instead of paying millions more, or gambling their lives and reputations on stopping him, most bidders decided it was smarter to let Grey have whatever he wanted. Unfortunately for Muse Incorporated, Grey seemed to want everything.

"Sold to Grey Temolt."

Another item went for the minimum bid. Breejara’s smile stayed perfectly professional, even as the implications kept piling up in her head.

If this kept going, she wouldn’t just be presiding over an underperforming auction. She would be standing at the center of another Muse Incorporated catastrophe tied directly to Grey Temolt.

Her sister had already learned what happened when that name got attached to corporate failure. Breejara had no intention of learning the same lesson herself.

Grey’s Elemental blueprint package wouldn’t save them, either. Muse’s projections already expected it to set off a bidding frenzy big enough for Grey to make back everything he’d spent tonight and probably much more. But, the blueprints belonged to Grey, not Muse Incorporated. No matter what absurd price they sold for, none of it would count toward the performance of Muse’s sponsored inventory.

Breejara couldn’t stop Grey from bidding. She couldn’t change the System’s starting prices, and she couldn’t force anyone in the hall to challenge him when they’d already decided it was a terrible idea.

However... what she could control was the order the remaining items came out in. And that was enough to give her one last way out.

Her eyes moved to the auction schedule.

If ordinary bidders had finally learned enough respect to stay away from Grey Temolt, then she needed to bring out something the other Betting Favorites couldn’t ignore.

Breejara’s smile slowly came back as she started rearranging the order.