Everyone took one minute to complete the test. So it took one hour and forty minutes before everyone could complete the test. Muni didn’t keep them in suspense before he announced the four who were going to be eliminated.
The four people fell to their knees and cried for another chance or more time to cultivate. Muni didn’t even listen to them. He was in such a good mood that he grinned as he subdued them.
He used blue chains made of water to bind all of them. Then he dismissed the class before he took the four of them away.
Muni’s destination was the market. He went there immediately with the four eliminated initiates without wasting any time. When he got to the market, he found many people already there waiting for him.
The sight of so many people made him smile and say, "Don’t rush people. This is just the first batch. It is the appetizer. We will have more in the following month."
He said that they shouldn’t rush, but this didn’t reduce the anxiety of the people nearby. However, no matter how anxious they were, no one could go over to snatch the four from Muni. Not only was he stronger than them, but he was also on sect grounds.
Since Muni had arrived, the auction could be started. The auction started with various items from many people. But the main items for sale were still the four eliminated initiates.
Three of the initiates were sold in parts. That is, some people only wanted their skeletons while others wanted their blood and their souls. So the three of them were dissected right there and then in front of everyone.
The three of them were split into various parts in order to satisfy the various demands. They weren’t dissected in front of everyone for some sick pleasure. They had to be dissected there in order to prove that the materials gained from them are fresh and authentic.
Only one of them was sold whole. She was a lady and a pretty one too.
She had survived because there was a big spender who ran a prostitution business and was interested in her beauty and wanted to keep her alive. Of course, it is not yet certain if a quick death is worse than being forced into prostitution.
She was to be enslaved with a Metac, so it is unlikely that she will be able to escape the way Loki did. This means that death could end her tenure of forced servitude. So only time will tell if she got the better end of the stick.
Muni received the money from the auction with a large smile on his face. The thought of how much money he would earn after he paid taxes to the sect and paid off the people who loaned him some money made him happy for the first time in a long time.
This auction is why he took the job of an instructor for the initiation program. The sect isn’t paying him to do the job. Whatever money he will earn from it will depend on how valuable the weakest initiates are.
His job is to do his best to create the best initiates for the sect. Of the 100 initiates, the best will go to the sect, while the remaining will be rightfully his to do whatever he wants with.
So the better the overall performance of the group of initiates, the more he will earn. This is why he encouraged them to do their best even before they awakened. It is also why Loki’s load back attitude has been such a sore point for him.
He wants every initiate to pay attention and do well because the fact remains that no matter how much they excel, at most, only half of them will survive. The remaining half of the excellent initiatives will be his source of income. So he doesn’t want someone like Loki spoiling everyone else by infecting them with laziness.
The most worthless initiate is worth at least 1,000 energy stones. This is why he didn’t bother to risk his life to protect Loki after he was paid 10,000 energy stones to turn a blind eye. They had literally paid him ten times the worth of a slave, so he didn’t dare complain.
If the failed initiates are pretty like that girl who was sold into prostitution, they are worth at least 2,000 energy stones. And as the initiation program progresses and the initiates become better, their value will increase.
At the end of the year, it won’t be out of place for him to sell an initiate for 4,000 energy stones and earn an average of 2,000 from every failure. So by a conservative estimate, he can earn 100,000 energy stones from 50 failures and 75,000 energy stones after taxes.
As someone who had to scrap for everything he has accomplished, 75,000 energy stones are a big deal to him. Especially since he will be earning so much in just one year, not slowly over the course of a few years.
Loki watched the auction from the beginning to the end. He had followed Muni to see the fate of the four failures, and what he saw didn’t disappoint his suspicions.
He wasn’t the only one who was watching. There were others in his group who had followed Muni or gone to the market for something else. Many of them had pale faces as they watched the four who used to be their peers being treated like livestock.
Muni saw them, but he didn’t mind that they saw what he did. In fact, he was hoping that the gory sight would spur them to try harder, which was why he didn’t forbid them from entering the market today.
After counting his money, he whistled as he left the market. He went to pay his taxes while everyone else had to find a way to deal with what they just saw.