However, they hadn't gone far away from the auction house's building when they were stopped.
A pair of young and old ladies in purple robes was standing in front of them. The young lady was quite beautiful, and despite being the same age as Leticia, she seemed mature. As for the old lady, her face was pale, as if she was sick; however, despite that, she had an intimidating air about her.
Max and the company were wary when they saw them blocking their way but sighed in relief after noticing that the pair didn't seem hostile toward them.
The young girl took a step forward, her eyes fixated on Max and said, "Hello, my name is Gene, and this is my grandmother. Can we talk for a second alone?"
Behind her, the old lady also had her gaze fixated on Max.
"Hm?" Leticia's brows shot up when she saw their weird gazes on Max and when she heard they wanted to talk to Max alone, she thought they might have found out that they were the ones who had bought two spirit fruits. So, she took a step forward and asked in a chilly tone, "What do you need? Tell us here."
Gene frowned slightly upon hearing Leticia's unfriendly tone and said, "You don't need to know that." She then ignored Leticia, looked at Max and asked, "So, what do you think? Don't worry; we won't harm you."
"You!" Leticia was infuriated at being ignored by her.
Max patted Leticia's shoulder and said, "It's okay. You guys wait here for a bit. I'll be back in a minute."
"Huh?" Leticia, Belen and Rima were surprised. They couldn't understand why he decided to go with them without knowing their intentions.
They wanted to advise him not to go alone, but he had already walked out.
Leticia glanced at Belen and Rima and said, "Should we follow after them? We might be able to help if there is something wrong."
"There is no need." Belen shook her head and said, "Since he willingly followed them, he must know about their intentions. Moreover, they didn't seem to be bad people."
"That's right. Let's just wait for him to come back." Rima chimed in.
Belen had guessed correctly. Max knew what they wanted to talk about. He was also sceptical when gene asked him to speak to them alone.
However, it was when he heard the old lady's voice transmission in his ears, saying, 'It's okay, young man. We meant no harm. We have a deal which you might be interested in.'
After hearing the voice transmission, Max knew that they really meant no harm because if they did, with their strength, they could kill him right then and there.
Why he thought as such solely based on a voice transmission because after meeting Arya's parents and hearing her father's voice transmission, he was curious about this ability, so when he asked the system about it, he found out that only those above four-star mages were capable of communicating with voice transmissions.
This meant the old lady was at least a five-star mage, and with her strength, would she need to trick Max? The answer was a simple no. Therefore he followed them.
After going into an empty street, they stopped. Max stood facing the pair of young and old ladies and asked, "May I know what the deal you told me about is?"
The old lady didn't respond to his question and seemed deep in her thoughts as she looked at him without blinking. Max felt weird being stared at like this.
Just then, Gene spoke, "My grandma and I were in the auction house a while ago, and when you passed by us, we heard you say you wanted to exchange your low-grade Mana stones for mid-grade ones. Is that right?"
"That's right." Max nodded and excitedly asked, "Could it be that you want to exchange your mid-grade Mana stones?"
"Yes." Gene nodded straightforwardly and asked, "How many mid-grade Mana stones do you want?"
Max's eyes gleamed, and he asked, "How many do you have?"
At this time, the old lady spoke, "We have more than enough. However, we only need ten million low-grade ones. So tell me, how many low-grade stones do you have?"
Hearing this, Max became excited. If he could exchange ten million low-grade Mana stones with them, he would have 100,000 mid-grade ones. If he could somehow gather 200,000 mid-grade stones more, he wouldn't have to spend 100,000 Lust points for the teleportation.
He immediately said, "Currently, I've 2.55 million low-grade ones. However, if you give me half an hour, no, twenty minutes, I can gather another 7.45 million."
The reason why he was so sure that he would be able to gather 7.45 million more Mana stones in such a short time was because he knew he could sell a few more copies of the [Destruction wheel] to the Greenwave auction house. He had previously considered selling them more but dropped the idea because they would pay him in low-grade stones, which he already had enough of.
"No. It's fine. You give us those 2.55 million you have right now." The middle-aged lady said.
She wanted to depart the city as soon as possible because the auction house already knew that they had many mid-grade Mana stones. Although it was said that the elves were good people, she knew it wasn't the case for every one of them. Some were worse than humans when it came to greed.
"Okay." Max nodded disappointingly. He now regretted not selling a few more copies to the auction house when he had time.
He then took out the spatial bag, which had 2.45 million low-grade Mana stones and then another one which he got from the Belen containing 100,000.
However, he didn't straightforwardly hand them over and instead asked, "How about you guys give me the 25,500 mid-grade Mana stones before I hand over mine to you?"
"Tch, do you think we will run after getting your stones?" Gene scoffed, clearly displeased by his attitude.
"It's okay, little Gene. Give them to him." The old lady said.
Gene nodded and gave him a spatial bag. After checking that there were indeed 25,500 mid-grade Mana stones, Max handed his spatial bags to her, turned around and left."
Even after he disappeared from their sight, the old lady continued looking in the direction he had left.
Gene noticed this and asked, "What is it, grandma?"
"That boy... he seemed to resemble your aunt Hannah quite a bit. Do you think he could be her son?" The old lady replied.
"That rude guy? How could he be her son?" Gene shook her head without hesitation.
The old lady didn't say anything in reply. After a moment, she grabbed Gene's hand and flew out of Ninam city.
...
Max returned to Belen and others, who let out a breath of relief upon seeing him.
"Let's return to the auction house for a moment," Max said and walked toward the auction house.
"What happened? Aren't we going to buy the beauty pill for Flavia?" Rima asked, puzzled.
Bonus chapter (8/15)
