Chapter 33: The Auction House

However, this data was not the entirety of Zero Beast’s data—only a portion of it. Exactly how much, neither Beast One nor the watch could tell. Beast One glanced at the watch on his wrist and said, “So, you really have no idea how much data is left?”

The watch replied helplessly, “I don’t know. You should be well aware—Zero Beast was wiped out once by you, then recreated a world. The remnants of its data spanned endless time and space to reach this world. Who can say how much is left? If you really want to know, you’d need to find several more pieces at least. With just one, who can tell…”

“Forget it…” Beast One shook his head and returned Zero Beast’s data to his system backpack.

His system backpack initially had fifty slots, with each slot able to hold one item. In other words, he could store up to fifty items. However, because the drop rate in this game had previously been so low, there had never been many things to put inside.

But with this game’s latest update, a secondary profession system had been added for players. Likely, many people would begin gathering materials for their side professions now. Materials, of course, would take up space. Whether each type of material would occupy one slot or multiple could share a slot was still unknown.

Beast One took a look at the Digi-Egg set aside nearby. The countdown above it showed only three minutes left. His intention to leave the login space waned for the moment. Still, he didn’t idle away—he opened the auction house right away.

The auction house was a system available from the start, so it wasn’t part of the recent update. It existed so that players could exchange what they had for what they needed. But admittedly, few had used it before.

Previously, its main use had been for selling gold coins. Although the exchange rate between gold and copper had reached one to a thousand, it often took more than a thousand copper coins on the auction house to buy a single gold coin.

Because the drop rate in this game had always been abysmal, people rarely wanted to pay with silver when copper would do, and rarely wanted to pay with gold where silver sufficed. When gold was required, copper and silver simply weren't accepted.

That was the way things had been. As for equipment? That could only be obtained by clearing dungeons. Each dungeon had only a few pieces to offer, not enough even for the party, let alone for sale.

Beast One searched the auction house but found no information about guild tokens. In other words, the guild token he held might very well be the only one in existence.

In the end, Beast One listed his guild token in the auction house, set it to auction mode with a starting price of one thousand gold coins, and left it at that.

There were two transaction modes in the auction house. The first was direct purchase: if Beast One set the price at a thousand gold coins and someone offered exactly that, it would be sold instantly. The second was auction mode: Beast One set a minimum price, and after a day, whoever had bid higher than the base amount would win. If multiple people bid, the highest offer took it.

Sellers weren't limited to choosing only direct purchase or only auction—both could be set at once. For example, if an item had a starting bid of one thousand gold coins but a direct purchase price of ten thousand, anyone willing to pay ten thousand could skip the twenty-four hour auction altogether.

This time, since Beast One had no idea what his guild token might be worth, he didn’t set a direct purchase price. After all, even if it was currently the only token in the entire server, that didn't mean more wouldn’t appear later; people could always just keep playing until they got another.

Once all this was done, the Agumon finally hatched from the Digi-Egg.

[Please set a nickname!] Nicknaming had only been added in this update, but because it was a minor feature, it hadn’t been mentioned earlier.

A nickname simply meant giving your Digimon a personal name. For example, if someone bought two huskies, their breed names would still be “Husky,” but owners would give them individual names—the same principle applied here.

Beast One was not gifted at naming and simply called his Agumon “Zero.”

[Congratulations, your nickname has been set successfully.] The system prompt disappeared at that moment.

After handling these matters, Beast One was ready for his next task: leaving the Beginner Village.

In "Digital Origin World," the game map was divided into Beginner Villages, Small Towns, Large Cities, Main Cities, and Super Cities. Unlike Beginner Villages, the latter four had Digimon guardians stationed within.

Small Towns had Champion-level Digimon as guardians, Large Cities had Ultimate-level, Main Cities had Mega-level, and Super Cities were protected by even stronger Mega-level Digimon.

Moving from one location to another in this world required meeting a level requirement. Once you were strong enough, you could either travel on foot or use a teleportation array.

Teleportation arrays came in private and public forms. The private array was available in the login space and cost one silver coin per use. If you had no silver, you could pay with gold; as for copper—don’t even think about it. Only silver would do, copper was pretty much useless here.

The public teleportation array was located in the center of the Beginner Village and was much larger than the private one. Each trip waited until a group had assembled, usually sending around eleven or twelve people at once. Each use cost one copper coin. Ten copper coins equaled one silver, so the prices for both private and public teleportation were about the same.

Of course, the farther the destination, the higher the cost; the more advanced the area, the greater the price. At the moment, since they were only heading to the nearest Small Town, the prices were low.

If one chose not to teleport, walking was the only option. Leaving aside the time required to walk, the path was fraught with danger—if a wild and powerful Digimon attacked on the way, that would be disastrous.

As for which option Beast One would choose—wasn’t it obvious?