Dungeon Hunter - Chapter 162

Chapter 162: Episode 49. The Fifth Auction of Devildom (11)

“…what?” I thought.

I was very surprised and remained silent. I did not know that the Spirits of Darkness were chasing after the Jinma Dragon, and I could not imagine that they found the body of Sheila, the Dark Elf Higher. In the previous life, no one could find such things.

A Dark Elf Higher was one of the highest monsters with level three, and it was a leader of other Dark Elves. I heard that only one or two were born every hundred years. Sheila was one of them, and she led a Dark Elf town, where Krithli and Julium came from.

All I knew about Sheila was that she died soon after giving birth to Krithli. I did not know much more about her. Krithli, too, did not seem to know much about her.

“There was something that I could not understand…,” I thought.

Only strong Dark Elves could live next to the Tree of World in the Devildom. Sheila, being the leader of Dark Elves, could live next to the tree, if she chose. However, the Dark Elf took care of Krithli and her town far away from the Tree of World.

Sheila then disappeared after she gave birth to Krithli. Everyone, including Julium, believed that she was dead.

And here we had her body in the auction house.

The beautiful female elf was encased in ice, looking desperate. Her hair was white, and she had a scar on her forehead, which looked like a crescent.

I could sense an unusual mana from her body, too.

“That is a curse,” I thought.

The ice was made out of very strong mana. It was so powerful that it even made me frown. And it was this strong mana that sealed Sheila’s dead body.

“This curse is not common. It is the power of ice, which is opposite to that of Ahojin, the Jinma Dragon. And the power of this curse is as strong as Ahojin. We tried to look for the culprit who put Sheila under this curse, but we could not find any information. It is quite strange that such a powerful being is unknown to us.”

Deboron was very excited.

Ahojin, the Jinma Dragon, was the best Demonic Dragon. It was in a different class than other Demonic Dragons. People had believed that the dragon surpassed the realm of transcendence a long time ago. According to Deboron, there was someone else, who was stronger than, if not as strong as, Ahojin, who trapped Sheila under this terrible curse.

“It sure is very strange that none of us has ever heard of such a powerful person or monster before,” I thought.

I rubbed my jaw.

If such a powerful being existed, even the archdukes could not easily control it.

Everyone in the Devildom treated Ahojin as the “outlier” or “impregnable wall,” and no one disturbed the dragon. If one of the archdukes decided to go on a full-fledged fight with the dragon with all of his demons and monsters, he or she might be able to defeat Ahojin in the end. However, during the fight, the archduke would receive tremendous damages.

Such was the reason that no archduke brought Ahojin up. At the same time, Ahojin did not provoke any of the archdukes. As a result, the archdukes and the dragon remained peaceful.

“Sheila, the Dark Elf Higher, seemed to die after she was cursed while fighting this unknown monster. One might ask why her body is useful. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the body of a Dark Elf Higher. It is not something that you see every day. Normally, it is almost impossible to get one, because Dark Elf Highers usually die near a Tree of World and their bodies get absorbed into the tree. Just imagine how powerful the undead version of a Higher would be! The curse, which is still in effect, will make the undead even stronger.”

Deboron was correct. Usually, the undead, which was cursed, was much more powerful than the one without the curse. And the curse, which the dead body of Sheila was under, seemed very powerful. In addition, the body of Dark Elf Higher itself would make a very strong undead. I got excited about how powerful the resulting undead would be.

As Deboron said, most Dark Elf Highers died near the Tree of World, and their bodies were absorbed into the tree immediately. It was almost impossible to get their dead bodies.

If I made an undead out of the body of Sheila, I might get something more powerful than an undead dragon, which was considered the strongest undead monster that had ever existed.

I turned around and looked at Krithli, asking her if the Dark Elf was really Sheila.

Krithli, who seemed to be lost in many thoughts, nodded.

“I will buy it,” I thought.

I decided to buy the body because not only was it Krithli’s mother but also because I was interested in the power of the curse. Although making an undead out of dead Sheila sounded fascinating, I was more interested in the unknown being, who was so powerful to put Sheila under a curse.

I wondered who that was. It was in the Devildom, but it did not reveal itself.

The curse that it put on Sheila was so powerful that I even thought about setting a new goal, which was getting as powerful as that being.

“Aha…”

Pandemonium exclaimed out of wonder.

The archduke was known for his skills of turning dead bodies into undeads.

In front of him was the dead body of Sheila, one of the best exhibits of undead that he could ever get.

Ufa also seemed to be interested in the item.

“I need to know more about it,” I thought.

I opened the Mind’s Eyes, and I tried to extract every piece of information about the dead body.

Name: Sheila

Comments: She is dead. The dead body is also under an unknown curse.

**Unknown force is accumulated inside of her heart.

There was no information about the title or statistics, because Sheila was dead. I did not mind the lack of such information anyway; the Dark Elf Higher had not been revived as an undead yet, so this information was useless.

However, the Mind’s Eye gave me one piece of useful information. I found out that the dead Elf’s heart contained mysterious force. I could not see the force with my bare eyes. If I, who reached the realm of transcendence, could not sense such force without the help of the Mind’s Eyes, others, including even the Spirits of Darkness, would not sense it, too.

I felt that the force inside of Sheila’s heart was the hint to solving a series of mysteries about the curse and the curser. I made up my mind to find out about the nature of that force.

“The starting bid is five million points.”

Deboron, smiling, called the initial bid. It was the same as that for the Hydra. The bid was indeed expensive, but the body of Sheila was worth the price.

“Five million.”

“Archduke Pandemonium! You sure do have eyes for good items.”

“Six million.”

“Archduke Ufa! I hope you win this time.”

Ariel did not participate in this round. The archduke did not favor making undeads out of dead bodies. Had the item been a living Dark Elf Higher, she would have definitely stepped it. The archduke did not seem to come in at all for this round.

Ufa and Pandemonium looked at each other with hostility.

Both had an eye for a good undead, so I was not surprised when they started competing.

“Seven million.”

“You are going hard! Mr. Pandemonium called seven million!”

Pandemonium would have probably known that Ufa was very wealthy. He might have about a hundred million or even more points.

The demons in the auction hall had had a chance to estimate Ufa’s fortune during the round for the Hydra.

Despite the opponent’s large fortune, Pandemonium picked up a fight, which implied that he was confident about his victory in this round.

Points was a different form of power. Whoever won a round was stronger than the loser in terms of this power.

So far, Ufa and his demons had invested a lot of their power, which was the points, on strong monsters in the auction. In other words, the members of the faction focused on increasing the quality of the monsters that they had. The dead body of Sheila, which was potentially a very powerful undead monster, was worth every single bit of their effort and points.

Pandemonium was well aware of his opponent’s strategy.

He must have had his plans, and the archduke looked very confident.

“Eight million.”

“Nine million.”

When Ufa called eight million, Pandemonium immediately replied with a higher bid even before Deboron could say a word.

Ufa frowned.

“It’s a tight competition! The bids are high, but the dead body of Sheila, the Dark Elf Higher, is worth the points. It is indeed a very special and unique. And when our customers compete for good items, I am also very happy. Archduke Ufa called nine million points. Anyone else?”

Deboron tried to cool down the heated atmosphere.

It was a well-timed break. The demons needed to take a moment to think about the true worth of the item again. As the price of the dead body of Sheila soared, I had to think if it was worth as much as the Hydra was. The selling point of this item was that it could make a very powerful undead, once it was revived. However, such a successful transformation into an undead required more than just a good body. Whoever performed the transformation had to be very skillful.

And Pandemonium was a step head of Ufa when it came to changing a dead body into an undead. Even if Ufa got the dead body of Sheila, it was very unlikely that the transformed undead would be anything above the highest monster with level three.

Pandemonium started to smile. He must have thought that he would secure the item.

When he was so sure about his victory, I stepped in.

“Ten million.”

I wanted to compete for an item like this.

In the end, I got the dead body of Sheila at twelve million points. Winning the competition between other archdukes was only a part of the challenge. The other part was whether Krithli was willing to transform the body of her mother into an undead. I had to rely on her for such a transformation, because she was the most skilled at it.

If I really pushed her hard, the Dark Elf would eventually follow my order and turn the dead body into an undead. However, if she was not willing, she would not try her best.

Krithli once told me that she did not have many memories of her mother. I first thought that the lack of memories of her mother would emotionally detach her from her mother. However, now that I started to think about it, since Krithli did not spend much time with her mother, she had a fantasy about Sheila. Such a fantasy would make the Dark Elf cling to Sheila emotionally and would hinder the transformation.

Although I used the term “revive” for changing a dead body into an undead, such a process was really transforming the body into a doll.

If the body was not preserved well, the transformed undead might lose most of the memories that it had when it had been alive. In the worst case, the undead might forget who they were.

“I must do it at all costs,” I thought.

Krithli looked gloomy. The Dark Elf was about to break down emotionally at any moment, but she was holding her emotions back in the public.

The Dark Elf was very clever, and I was sure that she must have read my intentions.

“I, Deboron, am happy to present the next item to you, the ‘Flue of Ferragamo!'”

I turned around and focused on the auction. The items, which I had purchased so far, would become officially mine once the auction was over. I decided to postpone thinking about Sheila for now.

In the following rounds of auctions, I secured four more items, which were “Conqueror’s Ring,” “Attitude of Puppeteer,” “Echo of Gaznuck,” and “Ethereal Blade.” The auction was done halfway, and I got six items.

I had about twenty-five million points left.

Despite the large expenditure, I was still comfortable.

The total sum of points spent in the auction was over a hundred million points. Most of the demons in the auction hall had used most of their points.

“There will be more,” I thought.

I continued to watch the items. The six items that I got were already a good deal, and I could invest the remaining points on my dungeons. Some of it, I could save for the next year’s auction.

However, I was still hungry for good items.

The Spirits of Darkness wanted to sell their items, which were presented in the main auction, at the highest price possible. In order to prevent deflation, the spirits used the previous session, the auction for individual items, to depreciate the costs of other items.

It took quite an effort to settle the prices of the items. I believed that the spirits had prepared something even bigger than the Hydra and the dead body of Sheila to earn more points and compensate for their effort.

Keeping such a thought in mind, I continued to watch the rest of the auction carefully. And I was correct in the end. The fifty-fourth item of the auction came up, and I knew immediately that I was waiting for that item to come out.

“Now, here we go again. I am sure that the next item will surprise all of you. It is an Egg of Angel. It is not just a normal Egg of Angel, it is an egg of Archangel! I will talk no more. Just take a look at it!”

The egg appeared as soon as Deboron stopped talking.

It looked like any other Egg of Angel, but it felt holier.