Chapter 13 The Player's Trial
Hachi was still dazed when he was locked in the underground cage at the auction house.
He didn't understand why he had agreed to Vie's outrageous plan. What if Vie just left? What if Vie couldn't rescue him? Wouldn't he really become someone's slave then?!
But, for no reason at all, Xiao Ba just felt that Wei Er wouldn't break her promise.
The dragon was right. Humans are indeed cunning creatures. How could he have listened to Violet? How could he have trusted her without any reason?!
"hehe……"
A deep laugh sounded from beside him, and Xiao Ba angrily looked up at the guy who dared to mock him—
"Ray, Rayleigh?!" Hachi grabbed the railing angrily. "You really are here, you scoundrel!"
It was an older man with mixed gold and white hair, who was sitting leisurely against the cold wall. His peaceful and calm aura was completely out of place with the group of anxious and uneasy auction items.
Sitting in the darkness, Rayleigh turned his head and asked curiously, "How did you end up here?"
Xiao Ba: "It's all because of you!"
Rayleigh was stunned for a moment: "Me?"
Of course, if Rayleigh hadn't wandered off so recklessly, he and Violet wouldn't have needed to go to the auction house to find him. And if they hadn't needed to go to the auction house, Violet wouldn't have been so desperate for money that she sold him!
Isn't all of this Rayleigh's fault?!
Rayleigh twitched his lips after hearing what Hachi said. No matter how he thought about it, it was the fault of that girl named "Vill". How could Hachi push the problem onto him?
Xiao Ba: "What do you know? Violet is young, kind, innocent, and naive. If it weren't for you, how could she have been forced to do such a thing?!"
Rayleigh: ? ? ?
That's outrageous! Did that girl cast a spell on Xiao Ba?
"But Rayleigh, what are you doing here? Has your identity been discovered?!" After venting his frustration, Hachi still looked at Rayleigh with concern, as they were friends after all.
Who would have thought that this dejected guy in front of you is actually Rayleigh, the legendary Pirate King Roger's right-hand man and the former Dark King?
"No, I just didn't have enough money to drink, so I sold myself and planned to find a rich buyer to double-cross me."
"...You and Violet must have a lot in common."
Rayleigh paused, recalling what Hachi had said, and chuckled softly, "What you said made me a little interested in that girl too."
"What?! Hey, don't even think about it!" Hachi knew about Rayleigh's declaration that he "liked young and pretty girls." "Stay away from Violet!"
He couldn't let Vera be fooled by this philandering old man!
Rayleigh said meaningfully, "Oh, it seems she's quite a pretty young girl."
"you……"
"Shh—" Rayleigh suddenly sat up straight with a serious expression, listening intently. "Did you hear that?"
"What?"
“The sound of a wild beast.” Rayleigh’s expression turned grim. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
And this kind of premonition usually comes when Roger comes up with another brilliant idea!
——
Violet sat excitedly in the auction house, and Xiao Ba, being a rare octopus fish-man, moved her to a seat that was relatively close to the front.
She rested her chin on her hand and watched with great interest as the slaves were led onto the auction stage, their expressions ranging from despair to fawning.
This game is really well-funded; even these obviously disposable cannon fodder NPCs are individually modeled, and their expressions are so realistic.
Rayleigh was pushed onto the auction stage, and his exceptional Observation Haki allowed him to quickly locate the black-haired, black-eyed girl in the audience.
He is indeed very beautiful... but he is too young, he is not an adult yet. What kind of terrible image does he have in Xiao Ba's mind?
Seemingly noticing his gaze, the girl looked up and gave him an innocent smile.
...Oh dear, this is troublesome.
Rayleigh sighed, the thick iron chains on his wrists rattling loudly.
Just then, a commotion arose at the doorway.
"That guy in the white shirt is CP!"
"Why are government officials here?!"
"What?! CP?! Does that mean the Celestial Dragons are here too?!"
Vera turned around and saw a man with medium-length purple curly hair, a high nose bridge, and unusually prominent dark circles under his eyes arrogantly walk into the auction house.
He held up a ring with an engraved pattern: "This is a ring bearing the emblem of the great Celestial Dragon, Roswald!"
He let out a few cackling laughs, his gaze sweeping over the elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen in the stands: "Seeing the ring is as if Lord Roswald himself were here, so..."
"Everyone, kneel down!"
"Who gave you permission to sit so leisurely in front of the Celestial Dragons' sacred relics?!"
An uproar erupted in the room. Seeing that no one made a move, the purple-haired man made a gesture, and his burly, menacing companion behind him pulled out a gun and fired it at the ceiling. Then, to everyone's horror, he held the smoking gun level and pointed it at them.
"My lord, my lord!" The auction house owner, sweating profusely, approached the purple-haired man and said obsequiously, "May I ask how I should address you, my lord?"
"Spandam!"
"Lord Spandam, what are the orders of the Celestial Dragons, the great Celestial Dragons?"
“Saint Rozwald knows there’s an auction of octopus fishmen here. He’s recently heard about a food called takoyaki and is very curious about it,” Spandam chuckled. “So he wants to try what takoyaki made with octopus fishmen tastes like.”
The auction house owner nodded obsequiously: "Very well, I'll bring that slave to you right away, sir."
Spandam stopped the other man and poked his boss with the muzzle of his gun: "Walk on your knees."
The auction house owner's expression twisted for a moment, but he still slowly knelt down and crawled down the steps covered with a soft red carpet: "Good, good."
Seeing that even the auction house owner, who straddled both the legal and illegal worlds, had knelt down, the other customers, looking at Spandam's smoking pistol and his burly, menacing men behind him, also knelt down in unison, their faces ashen, like straws blown by the wind.
Spandam enjoyed the feeling of being a bully, especially when the nobles knelt before him, giving him a strange sense of exhilaration as he looked down on everyone.
But Spandam soon noticed two discordant elements in the beautiful scene before him. Among the sea of dark heads kneeling on the ground, the two people still sitting stood out conspicuously.
One was a black-haired girl sitting in the middle of the stands, and the other was an old man being auctioned off as a slave.
"Wow," the girl said, looking at him. "Is this part of the story?"
Spandam's eyes widened: "Y-you, you, aren't you afraid of me? Do you know who I am?!"
"Uh, what pairing?" Violet struggled to recall. "You and that Celestial Dragon are a pairing? Sorry, I don't ship pairings."
"You arrogant brat, die!"
The man behind Spandam aimed at Violet. Rayleigh straightened up slightly, but the next second, he relaxed and leaned back against the railing.
Vera: "What is this? It's delicious."
Violet retracted the stone spear that had knocked the man's weapon away and looked at Spandam. Spandam shuddered and held the ring bearing the Roswald crest in front of him as a shield.
"No, don't come any closer! I'm acting on the orders of Saint Roswald. If you attack me, it will be considered a provocation against the Celestial Dragons!"
"Are the Celestial Dragons very powerful?"
Where did this country bumpkin come from? She doesn't even know who the Celestial Dragons are?!
Spandam: "Of course, they are descendants of gods, and I am a member of the World Government, serving the great Celestial Dragons!"
Spandam: "Stop now, and I might consider leaving you a whole corpse... Ah!"
Spandam yelled, clutching his waist, and stared in horror as the dark-haired girl raised the blood-stained spear and then smiled at him.
"What's so great about it?" Violet laughed. "You make it sound so impressive, but you have a health bar too, don't you?"
Since there's a health bar, even a god can be killed by the player.
Violet never hesitates to take action against hostile forces that have impersonated her.
Just as Violet raised her spear high, ready to deliver the final blow to Spandam, her wrist was suddenly grabbed by a rather rough hand.
Vera turned around, and there she was, the coating craftsman who had been locked in the iron cage. He was standing behind her, one hand in his pocket and the other holding her wrist.
Rayleigh: "If you kill him, it will be very troublesome."
Vera humbly asked, "For example?"
Rayleigh: "We'll be hunted down by the World Government and the Navy."
"Oh, but if we kill them all, no one will know who the murderer is, right?" It is common knowledge that killing all the witnesses makes it a perfect assassination.
Spandam looked at the cute and pretty black-haired girl and, with a touch of naivety and willfulness, uttered those chilling words, almost scaring him to death.
It was as if, in her eyes, the world was a game that only operated according to her ideas.
"Ugh, these young people these days..." Rayleigh started to get a headache. "Are you going to kill everyone in the auction house?"
Rayleigh stared intently at the girl in front of him, who was barely waist-high, wanting to know the answer.
"Never mind then." The others were still gray-named, clearly neutral forces that couldn't be killed.
"But if I just let them go, won't they cause me trouble?"
Spandam quickly said, "Let me go! I promise I won't tell anyone what happened tonight!"
At the same time, Spandam secretly vowed that once he left, he would send the navy to capture this arrogant and ignorant wild girl and imprison her to torture her severely!
Rayleigh, with his exceptional Observation Haki, frowned deeply, preparing to secretly eliminate him after Violet released him.
"I don't believe you." Violet looked around and her eyes lit up when she saw the iron cage with a large hole in it, which Rayleigh had torn open not far away. "Could the Coating Craftsman help me stuff them into that cage?"
"You're ordering me around way too much..." Rayleigh complained, but still helped Violet put Spandam and the remaining unconscious CPs into the cage.
Rayleigh even squeezed the broken iron bar to make sure they couldn't escape.
Violet looked at the unusually quiet stands: "I thought someone would stop us." With that boss acting so obsequious, she thought the other employees of this auction house would turn into red names halfway through.
"Because they've all passed out." Rayleigh regretted not using Conqueror's Haki to knock out those couples too, just to watch the show.
Rayleigh looked at Violet, who had climbed to the top of the cage, and asked curiously, "What are you doing?"
"Shh—" Vera beckoned to him, "Did you hear that?"
The "Hound Attack" event has begun. Players, please prepare!
[Countdown: 10, 9, 8...]
Violet put a flower wreath on herself.
On the night of the full moon, packs of hounds will automatically spawn around the player. These hounds, which have monster attributes, possess a sanity-draining aura that is even more terrifying than that of spiders.
"Don't worry," Vera patted the cage, "I won't hurt you."
“Since you claim to be a servant of God, then let the devil…” Vera tilted her head, “judging you.”
A note from the author:
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Rayleigh is hallucinating about Roger through Violet; he's got a bit of PTSD [laughing emoji].
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