Just how difficult was it to validate whether Dra (or Dramar as his real name apparently went) was really the CEO of the Abyss Auction?

It was absolutely impossible.

The Abyss Auction was the world’s leading deliverer of goods and services. Most sought after of all services on the Abyss Auction was the intelligence trade. That he found nothing about Dramar on there was something that somewhat credited the claim of the business card. Only managing members of the Abyss Auction had the power to make things on there disappear, after all.

It could also be a pointer to a very shoddily crafted fake identity. Given the strength of the illusion on the business card, this struck John as the less likely option. Nobody who appeared on Romulus’ court to hand over an enchanted piece of paper that led to a place that was everywhere and nowhere would slouch on making a couple fake pages. That they had thought one step further and deliberately avoided making pages was also a possibility.

While it was possible to buy intel outside the Abyss Auction, it was harder, cost more and would likely take several weeks to yield results. If they yielded anything. John wasn’t willing to get that into motion, as he was already convinced enough that this was either true or put together with such skill that he wasn’t meant to find anything.

Under such circumstances, John decided that he would just throw his lot into things being true and take his entire harem along for the expedition. Whatever or whoever they would be facing, it would be mutually assured destruction with Eliza around. The escape route also led directly to their home base. All in all, he had enough balls in his court that he thought it viable to take the risk.

“Alright, everyone ready?” he asked the gathered girls. Even Lydia was there, wanting to either protect him from an ambush or meet this elusive founder.

“Just get the fuck on with it please,” Eliza cussed at him. “I had the best, shit idea I ever had for a painting and now my artist’s finger is itching and it’s as if someone put a drill to my patience and is keeping on fucking my brain with it.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” John joked and pressed the business card against the middle door of the I.D. Gate Building. After two seconds of contact, the card disintegrated. There were no other visual indicators that it had worked. Not until John reached for the door handle and pushed it down, revealing the space behind.

It was an oddly normal entranceway of an apartment. A wooden wall with coat hangers and a little closet to leave their shoes bordered on a doormat. The group was too large to comfortably fit into the immediate entrance area. Unsure what exactly to do, John decided to just brush off what little dirt there could be on his shoes and then move on without taking them off. Everyone else followed his example.

They walked through an open door that led into a more spacious but still not particularly large living room. The furniture was European in design and of the timeless quality that rich people liked to afford. A dinner table, a medium-sized sofa, a large television and a second table with a laptop on it, nothing really out of the ordinary. The only thing that was off about everything were the bodies that sat around the dinner table. They were all lizardmen of different appearances, filling out five of the six seats. John specifically called them ‘bodies’ not ‘people’ because they sat inanimate like meat puppets.

The black lizardman that John was already familiar with peeked out of an adjacent room. “Finally, you arrive,” Dra said and entered the living room. He closed the door he had come through. John just barely managed to take a glance at the office room behind. “The home office was starting to annoy me. If you would please walk through that door,” he pointed at one that looked in no way different than any other, “then we can have our proper discussion.” With those words, Dra walked over to the sixth seat on the dinner table and, for the lack of a better term, shut down.

John scratched his neck. This wasn’t exactly the development he had been expecting, but he also wasn’t sure what he had expected. At least he was pretty certain now that they weren’t in any form of danger. With the remaining bit of caution and paranoia, he walked towards the door and slowly pushed it open.

They pushed into a space that was massive in its dimensions. A dome far above simulated the day sky. That it was an illusion was only visible thanks to its curve, making it appear like a massive fish-eye, through which a mimic of the sun slowly wandered. As per the walls or how far they were away, John couldn’t even start to guess. This was because the entire floor was covered in valuables. Primarily, there was money. Mountains of dollar notes rising several dozen metres high, with other currencies and books intermingling into the green to create an ocean of rich colours. Barely visible and serving as a foundation were neatly stacked bars of various metals.

John was looking at a somewhat unorthodox hoard. It was absurdly vast. It was likely the greatest gathering of wealth in the world. At the same time, there was a distinct lack of items. Magical swords, holy artefacts, infernal arms or enchanted shields, none of the kind were anywhere around the mountains, at least from what the Gamer could see. The owner of this entire assortment was also missing from sight, although John knew that was about to change when part of the money mountains started to move.

Coins clacked and dollars tumbled, as a massive body rose from underneath the hoard. The neck came into view first, a long, sleek thing with a ridge at the top of it. Spikes that had rested flat on the black scales to avoid cutting the currencies extended and pulled taut dark orange membranes between them. The ridge led up to a large, lizard-like head. Attached to the back of the elongated skull were eight horns, four on each side, with the same membrane between them. They, too, stretched out when the large creature opened his jaw wide and yawned. Hand sized, white teeth came into view and then vanished again behind tar black meat and scales as dark as coal. Notably, the eyes that looked at John were of a pure gold. They had no iris or pupil, were simply gold and glowed with power and heat. The entire being radiated a comforting level of warmth.

It wasn’t until a couple of legs showed themselves that John was completely certain he was dealing with a dragon and not some extremely large serpent. A wing stretching and a tail brushing away some of the money on top of the Abyss Auction’s founder completely confirmed this. Most of the black dragon’s body was still hidden under the piles of money. However, there was enough visible for John to know he was lying on his side and was of the classical, European variety. If there was an oddity, then it came from the way the talons of his front legs were formed.

They were unmistakably dragon claws, the talons, scales and overall shape left no doubt about that, but the five fingered hands were oddly similar to human ones. Odd was also that, for a higher dragon, this specimen was rather small. Of course, Nathalia’s size was unfair to compare to, but even next to Tilgun, this one would have seemed rather insignificant in sheer length. He couldn’t have been more than thirty metres, tail included.

With another tired motion, Dramar raised one of his hands and snapped a finger. A tear suddenly opened in the space above his hand and a large metal keg fell out. Like handling an oversized soda can, the dragon opened the keg with the index claw of his other hand and then poured the contents into his maw. A refreshed sigh later, he put the keg aside and looked down to his visitors.

“Hello, John Newman,” the founder of the Abyss Auction said and then reared his head over to the rest of the harem. “To you all as well. You will have to excuse me if I spare myself the trouble of saying all of your names. Except you, Queen Lydia. Your presence is slightly unwelcome, if I may be so direct. I had planned to get into contact with you on another day and over different matters.”

“Is that a demand for me to remove myself from this space?” Lydia wanted to know.

“I will leave that up to your lover. In other words, you can stay,” Dramar remarked with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “You may verify my identity through Observe, President Newman, I do not mind.”

Given such a direct invitation, the Gamer cast the spell.

“Alright, you are either the real deal or you are extremely adept at anti-information spells,” John remarked once he had closed the window again. “Your description has you marked down as extremely greedy… that confuses me a bit, to be honest.”

“How come?” Dramar inquired.

“I wouldn’t expect a dragon so greedy he is called ‘the greediest dragon’ to start trading his very own hoard,” John elaborated.

“Ah yes, that was a hard decision back in the day,” Dramar admitted. “It took me a few years to properly figure out markets. Eventually, however, I realized that I would continue to get more and more money as long as the funds kept flowing and more value was generated.” His tail swept at a nearby hill of dollar bills and caused them to fly through the air. “That was the theory anyway,” he grumbled. “It functioned all fine and well, I built a fluid hoard that is larger than anything the rest of my species could ever think of with their stable ones. Then you people had to ruin everything.”

“What went wrong with it?” John wanted to know. As far as he could see, that strategy had worked out wonderfully. Dramar had a hoard that was near impossible to access without his permission and it was filled to the brim with cash.

Letting out a few wordless grumbles, Dramar caught one of the many notes in the air and brought it down for John to look at. “What’s the value of this?” he asked.

John inspected the single piece of cash. It was a Romanian Leu. Not a particularly important currency, all things considered. “Whatever you can buy with it, I suppose,” the Gamer answered, genuinely not sure what the dragon expected the answer to be.

Sighing, Dramar waved the note around a bit more around John’s face. “What is the exchange of this for dollars?” he asked.

“About 4 to 1, if I remember correctly,” John responded.

Dramar nodded and let go of the Leu. He then picked up a dollar. “What’s the value of this?”

“Whatever you can buy with it,” John repeated his first answer.

“Exactly,” Dramar responded in an annoyed tone. “Whatever I can buy with it. What a joke.” He disposed of the dollar with a mindless throwing motion. “You have to be aware of the story of modern money, right?”

“Abyssal or mundane?” John asked for it to be clarified. “Because I actually know fairly little about the Abyssal side of things. I just accepted that US dollars are the currency of the Abyss.”

“Same,” Rave echoed.

“I have never found a comprehensive gathering of reasons myself,” Lydia added.

“The reason is,” Dramar said slowly, “that I wanted it. Look. What is the value of this?” he asked and pulled a gold bar from somewhere underneath him.

John had a slight idea where this was going now. “Gold is a valuable material in and of itself, especially in modern times. Fundamentally, it’s worth what people pay for it, but it can also be further used to make jewellery or in certain technical equipment.”

“You forgot to mention that it’s pleasingly shiny,” Dramar pointed out, “but it’s a good enough answer.” He put the gold bar down in front of John and then put a dollar and some third currency next to it. “For the longest time, every major currency on earth was made up of rare metals,” the black dragon stated, tapping on the gold with enough delicacy that no scratch was left on the bar. “Then, people decided to use paper as a stand-in for the rare metal because it was easier to transport.” He tapped on the two currencies. “Brilliant idea. Superb idea. Made everything easier. Also made for a way more comfortable bathing experience. Gold isn’t exactly a breathable material. THEN,” his voice rose to a roar, but calmed again quickly, “then, most of you people decided to just print away and said that your currency would be exchanged for the US dollar.” Dramar took the third currency away from the gold bar and placed it so the dollar was between the other two pieces of the visual metaphor. “Paper had the value of paper which could be exchanged for gold.”

“This is when you pushed for the dollar to become the Abyssal main currency,” John guessed, looking at things. “Since you are the heart of the world’s economic superpower, you would have had the influence to do so.”

“Yes, the only way to keep all of the paper in my hoard to translate into anything meaningful was to concentrate on the currency that still based its value on something shiny. BUT THEN,” the dragon now shouted openly, the membranes between his horns stretching and turning into a bright red, “YOU DECIDED TO DO THIS!” He picked up the gold bar and placed it back in his hoard, leaving the floor in front of John to only hold two pieces of currency. “NOW PAPER IS WORTH PAPER. WHAT WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?!” Greatly upset, the founder of the Abyss Auction took two handfuls of cash out of his hoard and dramatically shook his closed fists, as millions of dollars were tossed into the air. “NONE OF THIS IS WORTH ANYTHING!”

“To be fair, it’s still worth what people let you buy for it,” John tried to calm the black dragon down. He only got a mocking harrumph in response.

“I tried telling myself that. It worked at first. Nowadays, not so much.” Dramar laid back down on his side, visibly trying to relax. “The only reason why this paper is still worth anything is because I keep so much of it here, out of the open market. Should I ever decide to do so, me putting my money to use would immediately cause hyperinflation. The only reason your money out there has a sensible worth is because my money in here doesn’t. I can’t use it.” The voice and body of the founder were relaxed, but his tail still moved about in an agitated fashion and the red, even if less bright, was still present in the membranes. “I am the richest being in existence and I might as well be surrounded by air.”

“Gaia almighty, that sounds horrible,” Scarlett whispered with genuine terror in her voice.

John understood the sentiment, even if he didn’t feel that strongly about it. “And you think I can fix that issue?” the Gamer asked. Several ideas of how went through his head, but Dramar made it immediately obvious which one he wanted to talk about.