WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 63

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I slowly looked around the auction house. I was seated on the lowest tier, so I could not see who was above me. They kept shouting.

“One-fifty!”

“One million five hundred thousand points has been called. Anyone else?”

The auctioneer on the platform called out the points in a ringing voice. One million five hundred thousand points. It was an unbelievable amount.

“One-sixty!”

Someone else shouted. The auctioneer repeated the bid. The excitement was so intense I could feel the heat of it even from here.

I stared at the wraith tree brain displayed on the platform. If I used that, I would be able to make a puppet that suited me extremely well.

A powerful puppet containing the knowledge and experience of several mages could be born. It would almost certainly be stronger than any puppet I had made so far.

But it was too expensive. I had bought one for two hundred thousand points. It was hard to believe. What on earth had Myra been thinking when she called that price?

Hadn’t Miryeong clearly said its cost price was seven hundred thousand points? Even so, I had not expected the bid to climb to more than double that.

To be honest, I had called out a few bids at first too. Six hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand, and, getting a little greedy, eight hundred thousand. Just up to there.

I thought that might be the upper limit for this wraith tree. But the points were climbing far more recklessly than I had expected. My resolve faltered a little. I had no choice but to give up.

“Mm, are you all right?”

Hwaryeong, who was sitting beside me, asked. She was looking at me with her usual smile. Her eyes were full of laughter too. She seemed to be enjoying the situation.

“It really is an amount I never imagined.”

I said it with a bitter smile. At that, Hwaryeong covered her mouth and laughed aloud.

“Hehe, that is true. Evron-nim purchased it for two hundred thousand points, after all. In truth, that item is not valuable enough to exceed one million points like this. Just as Evron-ssi knows.”

She slowly looked around, then lowered her voice and continued.

“But everyone here is staying on the seventh floor or above. Points do not mean much to them. Apart from its function, the wraith tree is extremely difficult to obtain. They are throwing points around because they value that scarcity.”

Not function, but scarcity. Did that mean they were spending points purely with the mindset of collecting rare materials? I shook my head. These were opponents I could not beat.

“I see. Then it is not something I can dare to covet. That is a shame.”

Someone shouted again. One-seventy. Hwaryeong tilted her head. She began folding her fingers one by one, slowly counting something.

“Mm, is that so? Could you not buy it easily enough? It should not be that expensive. Not compared to the points Evron-ssi will earn from now on.”

The points I would earn from now on. I started calculating for a moment. Leaving out the uncertain points, I slowly counted only the points that would come fully to me.

She was right. The number that had felt burdensome until a moment ago suddenly felt a little lighter. One million seven hundred thousand points was an amount I could earn in less time than expected.

It would take a little under seven years. Since it took five years to gather seven hundred thousand points, I only had to add two more years on top of that.

“One million seven hundred thousand points. Is there anyone calling a higher price? I will announce it three times. This is the first announcement.”

The auctioneer shouted. My body flinched. Hwaryeong, beside me, was looking at me strangely. She seemed curious whether I would open my mouth.

Just as she said, that was a number of points I could gather sooner than I thought. Then maybe it would be fine for me to take it now. That thought came to me.

“One million seven hundred thousand points. Second announcement.”

My lips twitched. I felt my voice rise all the way to my throat. But as if something had blocked it, it could not come out.

Something was strange. These points that felt so light were also an enormous sum, so large I had never once held anything like it before.

It was not a number I could say so easily. In the end, after hesitating, I closed my mouth.

“One million seven hundred thousand points. Third announcement. Sold!”

Strength drained from me, and my body sagged. Should I have just said it? That late regret began rushing in.

At the same time, a feeling of relief also bloomed in part of my chest. It felt as if I had dodged something huge.

I never imagined I would agonize this much over letting a single item go. I smacked my lips. Maybe because I had spent too long hesitating, my mouth was completely dry. At that, Hwaryeong held out a cup.

“Here, wet your throat. Please do not think too hard about it. You can simply enjoy the auction.”

“Thank you.”

I poured it straight down my throat. Some of the tension eased. As she said, maybe I should enjoy it a little more comfortably.

After that, items continued to pour out. Just like the earlier items, they were sold for staggering prices. Prices that easily went beyond what I had expected.

As I watched the auction like that, the day quickly came to an end. In the end, I hesitated and failed to buy anything. Hwaryeong led me straight back to my lodging.

“You worked hard today. This is tomorrow’s item list. Please take a look. It is full of things even rarer than today’s.”

She once again handed over a thick booklet. I accepted it with my exhausted body and sat down on the bed. I had not known that simply watching an auction could be this tiring.

There had been so many things I wanted. I had almost bought a few as well. In the end, though, I hesitated and kept my mouth shut.

I opened the booklet Hwaryeong had left behind. Just as she said, it was full of items that looked even more precious than the ones that had appeared today.

The Ouroboros larva I had seen last time was also listed here. How much would this cost? They said its original price was five million points. Then would it go for roughly double?

Ten million points. I calculated for a moment. I could buy it after only seventeen years.

Should I have bought at least one after all? Just as this calculation showed, I only needed to save for a few years. Yes, only a few years. To earn more than a million points, that is.

I quietly blinked.

Then why had I been unable to open my mouth?

What had that ominous feeling from before been?

Had a mere one or two years felt too precious to me? But those points would gather anyway. There had even been talk of lending them without interest, so all I would have had to do was live a little more frugally from now on.

I stopped there. A mere one or two years. Had points become something that easy to gather?

I remembered when I first came to the university.

My entrance points were eleven hundred. And almost all of them had been ripped away. I had even been furious over the fifty points taken as the ring price.

What happened after that? Even until recently, one thousand points had been a very large amount to me. Large enough that I made puppets with desperate tenacity for its sake.

The same was true for making the message board. Points had always been in short supply.

Yes. To the me of all that time, points were not something that gathered, but something that disappeared. I did not remember ever gathering more than twenty thousand points.

I had even gone into debt to buy the wraith tree and was paying back points each month. If I included the cost of materials used to make puppets, my points were always scraping the bottom.

In other words, I had no points right now.

Yet even then, one million points felt like a joke. Since when had I started thinking like this?

Lying on the bed, I began thinking about that. I could not understand why points felt so light.

After pondering for a while, I found the answer.

I had changed like that from the moment I started calculating points. The points from the mirror bugs, which would gradually pile up as time passed, were making me that way.

At the second-floor advancement evaluation, I had thought many things had been ripped away from me. They had taken the results I would produce in the future, and in exchange, I now received five hundred points per month like this.

But wasn’t there something strange about that?

I slowly calculated. After one year, it would be six thousand points per month. After ten years, sixty thousand points per month. After one hundred years, six hundred thousand points per month.

Even the things I had hesitated over buying at the auction house today would be things I could purchase with room to spare after a hundred years had passed.

I counted again the points that would accumulate over those hundred years. Three hundred million. It was a staggering amount. When I first calculated it, all the resentment I held had melted away.

After that, my sense for points grew a little strange. I was only in the Young Tree realm. I was also someone who had only recently reached the second floor.

Yet I had come up here to the upper-floor auction house and was standing shoulder to shoulder with other mages. I had been appreciating the items appearing at that auction as if it were completely natural.

Then what had I lost in exchange for such an incredible number of points?

I began thinking about that again. It was something I had not thought deeply about because I had been drunk on points.

I had to provide one hundred mirror bugs each month. Inside them were my stems. It was unavoidable if I wanted to connect them.

And that was also the limit they had discovered in me at the time. The maximum they could extract from me. In reality, it was almost exactly that.

I had to mobilize even the shadow tree to recover my tree before I could barely meet that amount. By now, though, I had become able to draw out a little more than that. After all, the shadow tree had gradually grown.

Like that, I gained some breathing room. The large number of points made my heart feel full, and the part of me that had worried my growth might be blocked was also resolved.

At the time of the entrance ceremony, Luo had said it. At the university, strength and points were everything.

There had been an advancement evaluation, and I had felt keenly that I lacked strength. That was why I also became more interested in points.

And I came to focus on puppets. Making puppets strong was possible as long as I had enough materials.

Because I thought I needed more power, I had been paying attention to earning more points for making puppets.

Seven months passed like that.

I raised myself from the bed and checked my condition. The shadow tree had grown quite a bit compared to seven months ago. My tree was sparse because it had kept being cut away, but it was better than before.

Yes, I had grown.

But compared to before the advancement evaluation, the results were extremely meager. My growth speed, which had finally been on track, had crashed straight into the ground.

In this situation, could I really raise my realm? Because it still felt so far off, and because I had been drunk on points, I had barely thought about that until now.

My face naturally hardened. I was growing at a terribly poor speed. My whole life. At this rate, even if I spent my whole life on it, raising my realm would surely be difficult.

I thought of Hwaryeong.

She had reminded me, while I was hesitating, that points were overflowing for me. Just as she said, the more I thought of the future, the lighter points became.

Her tone was very cheerful, and she always said only things that sounded as if they were for my sake. If I had carelessly bought an item as she suggested, it would have remained as debt for me.

I had clearly come here thinking I was only going to look around. I thought there was no need to buy anything. But when I saw the wraith tree, and when I heard Hwaryeong’s words, a little greed arose.

Why had I come here? I thought about that. It was because Miryeong had invited me. Miryeong said he hoped to keep working well with me from now on, and that if there was something I liked, he would lend me points.

Then why had I accepted Miryeong’s invitation? It was to make puppets. I needed to obtain materials for them, and I knew that useful things would appear at the auction.

Then why had I wanted to make puppets? Because of the advancement evaluation. Thinking that I could not trust humans, I had wanted to make powerful puppets.

Then the advancement evaluation, why had I taken it? Because of the wraith tree brain Myra had given me cheaply.

With that, I stabilized the shadow tree and put its growth on track. And in the advancement evaluation hall, I encountered them.

Yes, that wraith tree. It was an extremely strange item. I fiddled with the thick booklet.

I bought it for two hundred thousand points. But according to Miryeong, it was an item worth over seven hundred thousand points. Yet here, it had become one million seven hundred thousand points and been sold.

Points, like this, held completely different values depending on the person and depending on the situation.

The memories of the advancement evaluation hall came back to me.

What they had figured out about me was extremely accurate. Myra had roughly noticed what actions I would take, and the limit they set for me lined up very cleanly.

There was no way people like that had failed to predict my actions after the evaluation.

Like that, Miryeong contacted me right when I truly needed it. When I was worrying because I had no puppet materials, Miryeong said he would let me use the upper-floor auction house.

I followed that thought.

There were still many parts I could not understand. But one thing was clear.

The current me was not as safe as I thought. At some point, I had sunk into the swamp of points.

I had been feeling happy while looking at points I did not even have yet, points that would come in the future.

I remembered what Hwaryeong had said. A powerless pig never knew when it would be eaten, was it? I thought that had all ended.

But it had not. I had only now been placed on the dining table. On this dining table called the auction house.

I blinked blankly.

What would have happened if I had ignorantly gone into debt and bought an item? There was no way to know.

The matter in the advancement evaluation hall was not over yet.

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