Vaskorin left without another word, moving faster than a man his age had any business moving, and John spent the interval alone in the sealed room simply enjoying the quiet.
He returned within the hour, considerably less composed than when he’d left, and gestured for John to follow without quite meeting his eyes.
"The top floor," Vaskorin said. "Garden terrace. I’ve arranged the company you deserve."
The terrace opened onto a private garden suspended above the rest of the Exchange entirely, silver-leafed trees ringing a single low table set with tea nobody had touched yet, the whole space wrapped in wards thick enough to hum against John’s skin as he crossed the threshold.
"Please wait here," Vaskorin said. "The buyers will come soon."
He bowed, considerably deeper than the occasion strictly required, and left without waiting for a reply.
...
They arrived in two distinct parties, close enough together that neither could pretend not to notice the other, both clearly having raced to arrive first and both clearly failing to hide it.
Crown Prince Alaric Dranvok came first, flanked by a broad-shouldered man introduced simply as Duke Fergor, both of them dressed in the kind of understated finery that cost more than it looked like it should. Behind them, moving with the unhurried confidence of someone who never needed to rush toward anything, came First Princess Seryndra Dranvok and her Knight Commander, a scarred, silent man named Roderick Vance.
"Mr. Silver," Alaric said smoothly, taking the seat directly across from John without waiting to be invited. "Word of your morning has already reached half the palace."
"Word travels fast in this city," John said, unbothered.
"Apparently faster than manners," Seryndra said, taking the seat beside her brother with a pointed glance in his direction. Her eyes moved over John a moment later with the particular thoroughness of someone cataloguing a threat, careful and unhurried, never quite settling anywhere long enough to be called rude.
Fergor’s gaze did the same, quieter but no less deliberate, and John felt the faint, polite pressure of a soul-sense probe brushing against him a heartbeat later, testing without intruding, the way one might knock before trying a door.
It found absolutely nothing, and slid off him like water off stone.
Vance tried next, more directly, a small silver disc pressed briefly against the table’s edge and humming with detection runes John recognized from three empires ago.
The disc flickered once, strained visibly against something it couldn’t name, and went dark.
"Fascinating," Seryndra said, not bothering to hide her interest now. "Truly nothing. Not even the residue most concealment leaves behind. My knight’s artifact has never once failed to read a soul before."
"I find honesty easier when nobody can read my face for it," John said, smiling faintly. "Shall we discuss business, or would you prefer to keep testing the walls?"
Alaric’s mouth twitched, somewhere between annoyance and reluctant amusement. "Business, then."
...
The two items sat on the table between them exactly as they had for Vaskorin, and the reaction, predictably, was identical, just louder.
"Absurd," Fergor muttered, leaning forward despite himself. "A permanent attribute pill, at this rank. My family has hunted rumors of such things for generations."
"The reliquary alone would be worth a province," Seryndra said, quieter, calculating.
"Both, then," Alaric said, before his sister could finish the thought. "Name your price, Mr. Silver."
"Territory doesn’t interest me," John said. "Neither does coin, or trade agreements, or anything with your family crest stamped on it. I deal exclusively in Spirit Crystals. Calamity-9 rank and Demi-God rank for the Demi-God rank treasure."
Silence settled over the table for a moment, all four of them recalculating at once.
"I already have a buyer interested," John added mildly, watching the two siblings’ expressions shift in perfect, competitive sync. "Elder Vaskorin, in fact. I’m simply curious whether the crown intends to outbid its own advisor."
That did it exactly as he’d hoped.
"Two hundred thousand Calamity-9 crystals for the pill," Fergor offered immediately, glancing at Alaric for confirmation that came a half-second too late to look coordinated, "and forty Demi-God fragments from the family vault for the reliquary."
"Three hundred fifty thousand," Seryndra countered, not even looking at her brother, "and seventy Demi-God fragments, verified purity."
"Five hundred thousand Calamity-9 crystals," Alaric said, jaw tight, "and a hundred Demi-God crystals."
What followed was a brisk, sharp-edged bidding war disguised as polite conversation, crystal counts climbing by the tens of thousands with every exchange, until Seryndra finally produced a small, sealed case and set it on the table with enough force to end the negotiation outright.
"Six hundred thousand Calamity-9 crystals for the pill," she said, "and every Demi-God fragment I have collected for the reliquary. Three hundred and forty, in total. Final offer."
"Humph." The Prince snorted, but didn’t push further.
’Damn it. I should have saved more Demi-God crystals.’
John glanced at the scroll, unhurried, then smiled.
"Sold," he said. "A pleasure doing business with the crown."
After the exchange was complete, John added, "Now, I’ll be honest. I sold these mostly to secure funds for my stay here. A man needs a certain amount of liquidity to be taken seriously."
Privately, the crystals were already earmarked for something else entirely. Raw Calamity-9 and Demi-God rank Spirit Crystals made poor fuel for cultivation on their own, dense but crude, the kind of resource that helped a little and wasted a great deal.
But if fed to Xhalthuun instead, sacrificed for Xhal Drops, they’d buy things built specifically to close the gap to Calamity-rank properly, and with enough left over, plenty worth reselling to the very people who’d handed them over in the first place.
"You call a province’s worth of crystal pocket change," Alaric said flatly.
"I call it a good first impression," John said. "I’m a merchant of Vault Curio Traders. I’m here for trade, and I intend to offer this city considerably more than what just left my hands."
"Then let’s discuss terms," Seryndra said, already leaning forward.
"There’s only one term that matters," John said. "If you want to trade from the Vault, things you may have never even imagined existed, you’ll need tickets."
"Tickets," Fergor repeated, brow furrowing.
"Tickets, as in gifts," John said. "Anyone who wishes to participate in the auction must arrive with one."
"Why a gift?" Alaric asked.
"Because I’ll be judging you based on it," John said simply. "Coin tells me nothing about a person. What you choose to bring tells me everything."
Nobody at the table had a response ready for that.
"I’ll be taking my leave for now," John said, rising smoothly. "I’ll be here tomorrow, right at this time."
He didn’t wait for a farewell. He just entered Monster Paradise right on the spot and disappeared.
"Where did he go?" Vance said, already sweeping the terrace with a soldier’s methodical eye, checking corners no one could have physically reached in that time.
"He didn’t teleport," Seryndra said slowly, staring at the empty space. "I’d have felt the displacement. He simply... isn’t here anymore."
"No scent trail," Fergor added, kneeling briefly by the table. "No residual heat. No soul-sense echo. Nothing."
"My artifact can’t even confirm a person sat here ten seconds ago," Vance muttered, turning the silver disc over in his hand like it had personally betrayed him.
"He’s not a Tamer," Alaric said quietly. "Or not only a Tamer. I don’t know what he is."
"Whatever he is," Seryndra said, folding her hands with careful composure that didn’t quite reach her eyes, "we should make sure we meet again."
...
By nightfall, the story had already outrun the four of them entirely, carried along the same trade channels that had first whispered his name into the Embervault Exchange.
It reached the Levetron Empire through a nervous merchant contact within the hour, passed along to a mercenary captain who thought his superiors would want to know. By morning, word had crossed into the Solmere Dominion, the Kaethran Imperium, and the Vaelspire Concord in turn, each retelling adding weight to a name and an organization they had already heard so much about.
Mr. Tauren, of the Vault of Curio Traders, is here in this realm.