“Two hundred thousand gold blers.”
“Two hundred thousand, once!” the host raised her voice.
“Two hundred thousand, twice!”
This time she paused for several long seconds.
That number was right about what she’d anticipated from the start.
While it wasn’t surprising, hitting her expectations was already a solid outcome.
Just as she was about to declare the sale.
A new voice cut through the hall, raising the bid by a full hundred thousand in one leap.
“Three hundred thousand.”
A shocking price.
This time, the voice came from one of the upper VIP balconies—special private boxes reserved for the elite.
Those seated inside never spoke directly; their bids were always delivered by personal attendants acting as their proxies.
As the proxy lifted the curtain to signal the bid, many in the hall turned to look—but before they could see anything clearly, the curtain was drawn shut again.
Roman glanced over as well.
From his angle, he didn’t even need to move his head.
He caught a glimpse of the figure’s silhouette, but any finer detail was completely obscured.
“Bid from Box Thirty—three hundred thousand, once!” the host called out loudly.
“Three hundred thousand, twice!”
As the bidding continued, the noblewomen in the hall let their eyes roam hungrily over Roman’s face and body.
Their gazes caressed him shamelessly, some curling their lips into wicked smirks.
Roman calmly met their stares, occasionally responding with a stubborn glare of his own.
But those glares didn’t upset the noblewomen at all—on the contrary, they blushed.
A few even went so far as to lick their lips with lascivious smiles, eyes filled with dark amusement as they drank in the sight of him.
What a fiery little thing…
Many of them had the exact same thought at that moment.
He looked soft and helpless like a lamb, but it turned out he had a rebellious streak, too.
How perfect.
Roman’s behavior didn’t discourage the women in the slightest.
On the contrary, it was like tossing blood into a shark tank—it only intensified their possessiveness and lust.
At the same time, his bidding price shot up again, quickly surpassing the 200,000 gold bler mark.
The host’s eyes lit up immediately.
She leaned in close and whispered in Roman’s ear, “Can you be just a little cuter?”
She was completely serious, though to Roman it sounded more like teasing.
He suddenly realized that from the very beginning, he’d been walking a path of no return.
In some ways, this life was even worse than the last.
If he’d once been powerless, now he was not only unarmed—he was on full display.
As the final “treasure” of the auction, he was about to be sold to one of the noblewomen below—and this time, there would be no chance to fight back.
He wasn’t a fragile person. In fact, Roman possessed a resilience that far exceeded most people.
In his past life, what truly pushed him over the edge wasn’t hearing that he was about to be sold—it was when those two men tried to rape him.
Reflecting on that moment, Roman couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of shame…
So that was it… It wasn’t that he rejected what was going to happen.
He just couldn’t accept it being done by such disgusting men?
While he wrestled with this inner turmoil, Roman didn’t even notice how flushed his innocent face had become.
The way he bit his lower lip made it look—at least to the women in the audience—like the purest form of seduction.
Such a pitiful, flustered look—wasn’t that just him being coy?
“Five hundred thousand.”
A calm, almost casual voice echoed through the room—and silenced everyone.
That kind of money could buy an entire small town.
No matter how exquisite or rare a plaything was, how could it be worth that much?
Tonight’s outcome had completely exceeded the host’s expectations.
The price alone made her blood burn with excitement.
She still remembered when this child was first found, clothes in tatters, covered in dirt.
Looking back, it was probably a way to protect himself.
Otherwise, with that face and body, those rough village girls would’ve torn him apart long ago.
Tonight, you’re going to shine with a value you’ve never even dreamed of since the day you were born.
The noblewomen in the front rows all turned to look.
The bidder hadn’t appeared on the floor. Instead, her proxy simply raised the card once again.
It was the same woman who had placed the earlier bid of two hundred thousand.
No one knew which family she belonged to to be this wealthy.
Guests in the upper balconies were at least of viscount rank or higher.
“Bid from Box Eleven—five hundred thousand, once.”
The host, who clearly recognized the proxy’s patron, called out excitedly, confident that the woman had the means to back her price.
“Five hundred thousand, twice!”
Tania Desmon was, in truth, only the daughter of a count.
In terms of status, she wasn’t particularly high-ranking within today’s auction.
Let alone above a count—there were several other count households present.
And she wasn’t even the first heir of her own family.
But the Desmon family had seen major success in business over the past few years.
Their region’s specialty spices had even sold out entirely at one point.
Politically, they might not wield much power, but in terms of wealth, even many duchies couldn’t match them.
When one of the other women provocatively raised her bid, Tania had been irritated.
So she’d casually thrown out a sky-high price meant to end the contest immediately—no more slow, one-thousand-at-a-time bidding that wasted time and dignity.
Just as the host scanned the room, suppressing her excitement in preparation to declare the winner, the troublemaker from earlier spoke up again.
“Five hundred and ten thousand,” said the proxy, raising the bid card.
The hall broke into murmurs.
That voice—wasn’t it the same woman who had bid three hundred thousand earlier?
Were the two going head-to-head now?
At this level of bidding, nearly everyone else had already been priced out.
It was now clearly a two-way showdown for Roman’s ownership.
And sure enough, Miss Desmon was visibly annoyed. She immediately raised again.
“Six hundred thousand.”
“Six hundred thousand, once.”
“Six hundred and ten thousand.”
Before the host could even count the bid, the second woman’s representative raised the number again.
“Luo Xiya, are you deliberately trying to cross me?”
Miss Tania Desmon finally spoke in a low, angry voice from Box Eleven.
The curtains separated the boxes, but for calculating ladies like them, it was common practice to investigate potential rivals long before the auction even started.
“Tania, is that what your mother taught you—casually addressing others by name at a formal event?” T
he woman known as Luo Xiya finally responded, her tone calm and cold.
“I am a count of the Empire. Not even your mother would speak to me like that.”
“Luo Xiya Kelden? Is that the Lily Countess? I heard she’s a real count,” whispered some of the guests in the crowd.
“Her mother, Duchess Kelden, is nobility, but Luo Xiya earned her own title directly from the emperor. Quite an extraordinary woman.”
“That’s why people call her the Lily Countess—not the Countess of Kelden.”
“She takes more pride in her own achievements than her family name, huh?”
“Seems like it.”
…
Tania clenched her jaw, unable to retaliate without losing face.
She slammed herself back into her seat and immediately snapped out a new bid.
“Eight hundred thousand gold blers!”
The words were practically squeezed out between her teeth.
At this point, Roman’s auction had spun completely out of control.
Whether or not Roman was worth the price was no longer the point—for Tania, this had become a battle of pride.
Tania sneered inwardly, quietly making up her mind:
No matter what happens, I’ll make sure that bitch Luo Xiya walks away empty-handed tonight.