Ambient Mage

"Well I'll leave you to explain this whole thing to your lady friend."

"Don't beat him too much okay? He's a good one."

She tapped Charlotte's back as she left.

And so we were left alone in the room.

***

About 5 minutes after sitting in silence with her processing.

"Lucas, when were you going to explain all of this?"

"All of what?"

"You knowing... you know."

"Know what?"

I leaned in and put my ear close to her mouth.

*Bite*

She bit my ear, in a playful way, but I guess to also relieve her embarrassment.

"You enjoying my ear right now Charlotte?"

She moved back.

I threw a knowing look and smirk at her.

She moved closer and smacked my shoulder.

"You're no good."

"No?"

"No good at all."

She put her hand on my chest.

"So you know....."

Her head drooped.

I was smiling so much, and I think she could tell, since her ears were burning.

I moved towards her ears, and blew into them.

She pushed me away from her and fell backwards into the couch.

"Lucas are you okay?"

She was one leg away from mounting me.

"Wow, you really cut to the chase don't you?"

She blushed and moved her silver hair in front of her face to cover it up.

I put my hand up to the hair hanging down from her hands, and began to twirl it.

She jerked her body and faced me.

I looked for her eyes, but she was avoiding me.

So I moved my hands up to her own.

She let out a quiet squeak.

"Alright students, no horsing around in my reception room okay?"

Charlotte with one leg on the couch and one leg already standing stood up quickly.

"Sorry."

I responded with a tease to both.

"Any longer, and you both may have witnessed my silver tongue."

With that, Sarah left the room.

Charlotte also walked away blushing like crazy.

Head in her hands.

I sat up.

"Still want to head to that auction?"

"No, the mood's spoiled for that now."

She said with a muffled sound through her hands.

"Like how Sarah spoiled our mood?"

"IS THIS ALL A JOKE TO YOU?!?!"

Woah, where did that come from?

"You know that I really like you, and you were teasing me the entire time in here."

"Did you know that she was outside the entire time, and still doing that?"

"And then you made another one of your wisecracks."

"Why?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you felt this strongly. I apologize for teasing you, when you were being so sincere with how you felt."

She started to cry.

A silent crier unlike Aura.

I stood up and reached for her elbow.

She got the hint and dropped an arm to me.

I held her hand and pulled her head into my chest.

I feel so horrible.

I didn't mean to make her feel like I was toying with her emotions.

I began to stroke her head.

Time passed and I began to speak softly.

"You know, I wasn't the person to find out that you liked me."

"Someone else told me, to which I was skeptical at first."

"But soon some things confirmed it for me."

"So if you want we can continue this date after I get you cleaned up, or we can just head back to the dormitory."

"I don... .. . .. . ."

"Sorry, what."

She moved her face up just enough to speak."

"I don't want to go back."

"What were you plans for today?"

"Well I wanted to go to a restaurant too."

"Which one?"

"You'll just tell me you know the owner too."

I laughed.

She turned her head resting her cheek against my chest, and began to pout.

She put her arm around me.

"Can I do this?"

"Sure."

She raised her head to look at me.

"So....."

"You want to continue the date Charlotte?"

"You knew that too huh?"

"Well, it's not exactly every day you take one of your best friends' knight out, and not use them as an escort."

She pouted again.

"You know, I think I have spent wayyyyyyy to much time with the two of you."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, you two pout in similar ways."

"Wait didn't she say you seduced Aurelia too?"

"Well, we did end up sharing a kiss once."

She backed away from me.

"So you're already committed to her then?"

"Well, yes."

"Then have I just been interfering in your relationship with her?"

"Nope."

"What do you mean? Do you mean to say you don't like her?"

Charlotte began to speed up.

"Why not, she's pretty, smart, talented, kind, sexy-"

"Why are you trying to sell your own friend right now?"

I guess it took her a minute to realize she was advocating for her own opponent.

"Well, if you're still up for grabs then I'll make it so that, you can't help but come to me."

"Nice try, but if I have to choose between the two of you, I'd rather a harem instead."

"Don't lie to me Lucas, this was your plan from the start!"

"Well..... maybe."

"Oh my, wait, so who are you trying to romance?"

Why is she so excited for rivals?

"Any reason in particular?"

"Well I need to know so I can prove I'm better in every aspect."

"Wouldn't it make more sense for you to move on to another man instead?"

"Well, it's true it would be easier, but for the last 4 years since my debutante, all I've gotten are marriage requests, and out of the men in the kingdom, there was only one that fit the description of the person I like."

"And who would that be?"

"Well, that, I guess, will be the true surprise today."

"Alright, well since our plan to go to the auction was spoiled, what was it you wanted to buy?"

"I wanted a matching necklace to bracelet.

"It was sapphire, with silver collets."

"It was super pretty, and I wanted you to put it on me after the dinner."

"Well I think I can still make that happen."

"What? How?"

The piece she was talking about wasn't actually up on auction.

It was on bid, but the auction was merely to draw attention to it.

The buy out price was not astronomical, almost 1.5x the worth of the piece.

Still it was worth about 350 gold, not a small sum, but roughly the cost of 3-4 weeks worth of the duchy's operations and a third of the total income of it in that time.

"Follow me."

We walked to the display area of the auction.

I met with one of the employees there.

"Could you point me in the direction of the Jewelry section, and the bid part of it?"

In game, these areas were all tabs in a store menu, so most of the building was unknown and known to me at the same time.

"Yes sir," he pulled out a map, "the jewelry section is right here."

He pointed at an area towards the front of the building on the opposite side from us.

Charlotte was in her own world right now staring at the expenses of the items currently on display.

"Thank you."

"My pleasure sir."

"Hey, Charlotte, let's go."

"Okay."

The jewelry in question is called the 'Deep Blue Dream'

It is a 3 heart item for Charlotte.

While the item is expensive, for it's excessive use of sapphire, for richer players, affording to pay for on every week wasn't bad.

The 'Deep Blue Dream' could only appear in the bid room once.

After that it greys out in the menu and you need to commission it from a jeweler.

But this is reality, and not a game, so I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon.

 As we walked into the room, we saw a few people in the room watching the bid price.

I whispered to Charlotte as I pointed out the buyout price.

"You can do that?"

"If the item is a timed bid, and not an auction item, and the owner, or auction house decide to have a buyout price."

"Wow."

So far the bid on the jewelry had approached 180 gold.

As the bids started to inch closer to the real value of the necklace-bracelet pair, the bids started to slow and increase in smaller increments.

The real price, as found by an appraiser in game, is said to be about 235 gold.

Still a decent ways away from 180, but increasing it at the pace they did, they would have hit it in a few hours.

The bid had a few days left in timer, which made sense, we were closing in on the end of the bid.

"Alright, Lucas, I've made a decision."

"And what is that?"

"I'm going to buy it out."

I turned to her flabbergasted.

Instead of overbidding, which is to say, bidding over the real valuation of the item, to secure it, or allowing an auto bid up to 350 gold, she just straight up declared she would buy it.

"Charlotte do you have the money for that?"

"Of course, I'm rich."

"What does that mean?"

"This 350 I'm going to spend, probably doesn't 5% of my total gold."

Rich, filthy rich.

I mean if that didn't even scratch the 5% mark, that should mean she has more than 20 times 350 gold in reserve.

That's going to be at least 10,000 gold.

That's enough to put some people through an entire playthrough.

Here she is casually flaunting it around.

I guess this was an appeal of pursuing her in game.

But I'm not going to use her as a personal bank.

It's rude, and cruel to her to do so.

So I'll play along to her whims, but I won't ask her to buy me anything.

I won't allow myself to make her cry again, it hurts me too much.

At the same time, though, I don't want to push her away, because I love her.

So I'll make the compromise here.

If she buys me something, without my asking, I'll gratefully receive it, and buy her something in return, even if it won't match in value.

If she doesn't, I'll still pursue her regardless.

This is how I'll retain my pride as a man, and keep her happy.

"What's wrong Lucas? You've been staring at my face."

"A proposal."

"Huh?"

"Bid has gone up to 185 gold."

"Oh right, I need to buy it out."

She raised her bid card, which currently had only her number, not a bid, and turned it around to the red side, labeled only as 'buyout'.

"The item has been bought out."

"Thank you for your attention on this item."

We walked out of the bid room.

"Hey Charlotte, how did you know it was a silent bid."

"You know I've been to these things before right?"

"Really?"

"Yes, so how did you know it was a silent bid?"

"I've also been to them before."

A complete lie, but a plausible one.

"So if I didn't know were you just going to let me yell out?"

"No way, but I couldn't say anything before you put your card up."

"Hehehe."

Wow.

All that for a tease?

"Look at you pouting it's so cute."

She poked my cheeks, before pinching my nose.

Maybe this is how it feels to be flirted with in a physical fashion.

Well whatever makes Charlotte happy I guess.

"So we can go to the main reception to get the item after we've won the bid."

"Got it, let's go there then."

I pulled out the card Sarah gave me a dark purple card with engravings on it.

'Blue Sea Emporium'

This is a card received in game for spending a lot of money in the city/auction and meeting the owner at least once, including through the shops she personally manages, or an arranged meeting where she hides herself.

It grants 50% off towards any item purchased. Given that the card's color hasn't been drained.

Sarah was quite the inventive entrepreneur. She introduced a no time limit card.

It simply ran on two principles, amount bought, and in what amount of time.

If you bought 1 item a day every day in a row, you could do it for half a year, before having to wait for the card to recharge.

You could also purchase a few items a day, and go a few times a week, with the same result.

But the difference with this card, as opposed to a card with limited uses, if you simply refrained from using it for a week, you could 'recover' some uses.

It provided holders with incentive to buy lower priced items at full price, while still paying large sums for the higher priced objects, due to their astronomical bid numbers.

Charlotte may have been rich, and the imperial family may have been the richest in the entire continent, but one to one, I doubt anyone else could move as much money as Sarah could in a short time.

As we finished our walk to the reception we placed our bid number and set down the card.

"I'm sorry, I don't recall having registered this card today."

I felt just as confused.

So she didn't register here, before we got here, or when we did.

I guess I'm okay to be surprised at the fact she just pulled out the card and performed a buyout.

"Ah, sorry, this card, isn't a registered 'Blue Sea Emporium' card, it's a city wide, auction card."

What.

Since when was that a thing.

Sure, in game the auction card was one item, no matter how many auctions you went to in game.

Every time you bought an auction card for the day, it wouldn't appear in your inventory if you already had one.

Instead the card in your inventory, would simply change from 'name of auction house auction card', to 'Auction Card'.

But there was never a city wide auction card in game, at least that I and most other players knew about. I'm sure of it.

Interesting though, it brings out more options I guess.

"Ah I see, I'll get that processed for you."

"Hey Charlotte how'd you get that card?"

"Well, I received it from the city council since I am the princess, and naturally my pockets are deep, and they want my money."

Ah. So that's how you obtained such a card.