I carefully looked around the auction house.
I was situated on the lowest tier, so I couldn’t see who was above me.
They kept shouting.
“One hundred and fifty!”
“We have one hundred and fifty thousand points! Does anyone else wish to bid?”
The auctioneer on the platform loudly declared the score.
One hundred and fifty thousand points—an enormous figure.
“One hundred and sixty!”
Someone else shouted.
The auctioneer echoed the number again, his voice brimming with excitement.
The fervent atmosphere was palpable even from where I sat.
I gazed quietly at the spectral tree’s brain displayed on the platform.
With that, I could craft a doll perfectly suited for me.
It would be a powerful doll, imbued with the knowledge and experience of many magicians.
It would undoubtedly surpass any doll I had created so far.
But it was too expensive.
I couldn’t believe I had bid twenty thousand points for it.
‘What on earth had Myra been thinking when they called out such a score?’
‘Hadn’t the original cost been seventy thousand points?’ I never expected the bidding to soar to twice that amount.
At first, I had also made some bids—sixty, seventy, even eighty points as greed crept in.
That was where I had drawn the line.
I thought that would be the upper limit for this spectral tree.
But the bids climbed relentlessly, exceeding my expectations.
My resolve faltered, and I had no choice but to give up.
***
“Are you alright?”
The person next to me, Hwaryoung, asked.
She looked at me with her characteristic smile, her eyes filled with amusement, as though she found this situation entertaining.
“It’s an amount I never could have imagined,” I said with a bitter smile.
Hwaryoung covered her mouth and laughed softly.
“Haha, that’s true. Mr. Evron, you bought it for twenty thousand points, after all. Honestly, that item isn’t worth exceeding a hundred thousand points. You know that as well as I do.”
She glanced around cautiously and lowered her voice.
“But everyone here resides on the seventh floor or higher. Points don’t mean much to them. The spectral tree, regardless of its functionality, is extremely rare. They’re bidding on its scarcity.”
‘Not for its function but for its rarity?’ I shook my head at the thought of throwing points away just to collect rare materials.
I couldn’t compete with such people.
“I see. There’s no way I could rival them. What a pity,” I said.
Someone else shouted again—one hundred and seventy.
Hwaryoung tilted her head and began counting on her fingers slowly.
“Hmm, is that so? I think you could afford it. It’s not as expensive as it seems, considering the points you’ll earn in the future,” she said.
‘The points I’ll earn in the future?’
I started calculating.
Excluding uncertain points, I carefully counted only what would come directly to me.
She was right.
The score, which had seemed daunting moments ago, felt somewhat lighter.
One hundred and seventy thousand points was an amount I could earn in a shorter time than I had expected.
It would take just under seven years.
Gathering seventy thousand points had taken five years, so adding just two more years wasn’t a big deal.
“One hundred and seventy thousand points. Does anyone else wish to bid? I will announce it three times. This is the first call,” the auctioneer declared.
His voice made me flinch.
Hwaryoung looked at me curiously, waiting to see if I would speak.
As she said, it was an amount I could gather more quickly than I thought.
‘Should I go for it now?’
“One hundred and seventy thousand points. This is the second call.”
I opened my mouth but hesitated.
The voice rose in my throat but didn’t come out, as if something were blocking it.
Something felt off.
Despite how manageable the score seemed, it was still an enormous amount—beyond anything I had ever touched.
It wasn’t a number I could easily declare.
In the end, I closed my mouth, torn by hesitation.
“One hundred and seventy thousand points. This is the third and final call. Sold!”
My body slumped as the tension left me.
‘Maybe I should’ve said something.’
A sense of regret washed over me.
At the same time, relief bloomed within me, as though I had narrowly avoided something significant.
‘How could a simple auction feel so exhausting?’
I smacked my dry lips.
Hwaryoung handed me a cup.
“Here, have some water. Don’t overthink it. Just enjoy the auction.”
“Thank you,” I said, gulping it down.
Some of the tension eased.
Perhaps I should take her advice and enjoy myself a little.
***
More items continued to appear, selling for astonishing prices that far exceeded my expectations.
By the time the auction ended, I had purchased nothing, still lost in indecision.
Hwaryoung led me back to my quarters.
“You worked hard today. Here’s tomorrow’s catalog. Take a look. It’s full of even rarer items than today,” she said, handing me a thick booklet.
I received it wearily and sank onto the bed.
‘How could just watching an auction be so draining?’
The booklet Hwaryoung gave me was packed with items even rarer than what I had seen today.
Among them was the Ouroboros Fluid I had seen before.
I wondered how much it would cost.
Its original price was five hundred thousand points, so it might double.
‘A million points.’
I calculated briefly.
It would take seventeen years to save up.
‘Maybe I should’ve bought something today. Just a few years of saving would’ve sufficed, like this calculation shows. It was just a few years.’
I blinked slowly.
‘Then why couldn’t I speak up earlier? What was that foreboding feeling? Was it really just one or two years that I couldn’t let go of? But it was an amount I would eventually earn anyway. There was even talk of interest-free loans, so I could have simply lived frugally for a while. But wait—one or two years? Was earning points really so easy?’
Memories of when I first entered college surfaced in my mind.
My entrance score was 1,100 points.
Most of it was taken from me.
I even felt indignation when they took fifty points for the cost of a ring.
‘What happened after that?’ Even recently, 1,000 points were a huge amount for me.
I had to relentlessly create dolls just to earn that much.
The same went for building the bulletin board.
Points were always in short supply.
Right. For me, points weren’t something that accumulated—they disappeared.
I couldn’t even recall a time when I had more than 20,000 points.
In fact, I was in debt from purchasing the spectral tree.
I was repaying points monthly.
Including the cost of materials for creating dolls, my points were always scraping the bottom.
In other words, I currently had no points at all.
And yet, 1,000,000 points suddenly felt trivial.
‘When had I started thinking this way?’
Lying on the bed, I began pondering why points felt so insignificant.
After a moment of reflection, I found the answer.
It was after I started calculating the points.
The gradual accumulation of points from the mirror worms had changed me over time.
During the second-floor promotion exam, I thought they had taken so much from me.
They had taken what I believed were the results of my future efforts, and in exchange, I was receiving 500 points per month.
‘But wasn’t something about this strange?’
I calculated slowly.
In one year, that’s 6,000 points.
In ten years, it’s 60,000 points.
In a hundred years, it’s 600,000 points.
Even the items I hesitated to buy at today’s auction would be easily affordable after a hundred years.
I recalculated the points that would accumulate over a century—300 million.
An enormous amount.
When I first calculated this, all the resentment I had been holding onto melted away.
After that, my perception of points became somewhat skewed.
I was merely at the stage of a sapling and had only recently ascended to the second floor.
Yet here I was, standing in the upper-floor auction house, observing items alongside other magicians as if it were natural.
‘So, what had I lost in exchange for such an enormous amount of points?’
I started pondering that question again.
***
I was obligated to provide 100 mirror worms every month.
Within them was my tree trunk—an unavoidable sacrifice to establish the connection.
This was the limit they had determined for me at that time.
It represented the maximum they could extract from me, and indeed, it was almost accurate.
I had to rely on the shadow tree to replenish my own tree just to meet the quota.
Now, the shadow tree had gradually grown, allowing me to extract slightly more than before.
This gave me some leeway.
The abundance of points provided a sense of security and alleviated my concerns about stagnation.
During the entrance ceremony, Luo said that strength and points were everything in the university.
The promotion exam had made me keenly aware of my lack of strength, which led to my increased focus on points.
And so, I turned my attention to dolls.
With the right materials, making a strong doll was possible.
***
Seven months passed like that.
I sat up in bed and checked my condition.
Compared to seven months ago, the shadow tree had grown significantly.
My main tree was still bare from repeated pruning, but it was in better shape than before.
Yes, I had grown.
But compared to my progress before the promotion exam, it was minuscule.
The pace of my development, once on track, had now plummeted to the ground.
‘In this state, could I really elevate my realm?’ It seemed impossible, and for too long, I had been intoxicated by the allure of points, avoiding this thought.
My face naturally hardened.
My growth was painfully slow.
At this rate, it would take a lifetime to ascend.
Hwaryoung came to mind.
She had reminded me of the abundance of points flowing my way, her words light and always supportive.
‘If I had recklessly purchased something following her advice, it would have left me in debt.’
‘I had come here with the intention of merely observing.’
I thought I didn’t need to buy anything.
But after seeing the spectral tree and hearing Hwaryoung’s words, I felt a twinge of greed.
‘Why had I come here in the first place?’ I recalled that Miryeong had invited me, offering to lend points if I found something I liked.
‘Then why had I accepted Miryeong’s invitation?’ To make dolls.
I needed materials, knowing the auction would feature worthwhile items.
‘Why did I want to make dolls?’ For the promotion exam.
Distrustful of humans, I wanted to create a powerful doll instead.
‘Why had I taken the promotion exam?’ Because of the spectral tree’s brain that Myra had provided at a low price.
That had stabilized the shadow tree and put its growth back on track.
And it was at the promotion exam that I had encountered them.
Yes, that spectral tree—it was a peculiar item.
I touched the thick catalog absentmindedly.
I had bought it for 20,000 points, but Miryeong had said it was worth over 70,000 points.
Yet here, it had been auctioned off for 170,000 points.
Points, it seemed, had vastly different values depending on the person and situation.
I recalled the promotion exam.
Their assessment of me had been precise.
Myra had a good sense of what I would do, and the limit they had set for me was accurate.
Such people couldn’t have failed to predict my actions after the exam.
‘It was no coincidence that Miryeong contacted me at just the right time, when I was struggling with doll materials, offering access to the upper-floor auction.’
I continued thinking.
There were still many parts I didn’t understand.
But one thing was clear.
I was not as safe as I had believed.
Somewhere along the line, I had become trapped in the swamp of points.
I was feeling happiness from points I didn’t even have yet, points that were supposed to come in the future.
Hwaryoung’s words resurfaced: “A powerless pig never knows when it will be slaughtered.”
I thought that chapter was over.
But it wasn’t.
I had just stepped onto the dining table—this auction house’s dining table.
I blinked blankly.
‘What if I had naively gone into debt to buy something? Who knows what might have happened?’
The events of the promotion exam weren’t over yet.