The Conquerors Path Chapter 1073 - 1071 — The Phantom Night-Market

We moved to the Phantom Night-Market.

We had left the stunned, weeping master chefs kneeling in the basalt promenade, their minds entirely broken by the localized devastation of the Flame-Kelp. As we drifted away from the public sector, the roaring, open-air magma vents were replaced by smooth, polished corridors of cooling obsidian. The crowds thinned to nothing.

"Oh, the air in here smells expensive."

Krave said.

The ancient kraken stepped lightly onto a suspended, floating platform constructed from pale, glowing moon-coral. She looked out over the market.

The Phantom Night-Market was a sprawling, subterranean cavern completely submerged in heavily filtered, temperature-controlled water. Unlike the chaotic Bourse or the aggressive lower terraces, this space was a monument to hushed, cutthroat refinement. Floating platforms of coral and obsidian hovered at varying elevations, connected by shimmering bridges of hard-light bio-magic. Heavily cloaked elite chefs and aristocratic procurers whispered to specialized auctioneers, bidding on ingredients that were too lethal, too rare, or too politically sensitive to be sold in the open.

"It smells like heaven."

Luna projected directly into my mind.

The silver wolf was draped across my shoulders, her claws rhythmically kneading the heavy fabric of my coat. Despite having recently consumed a colossal slab of seared serpent belly, her silver eyes were blown wide, darting aggressively from one suspended display case to another.

We navigated the floating platforms completely undetected. Krave acted as our tour guide, her ancient knowledge of the deep effortlessly identifying the bizarre, highly warded anomalies resting on the auction blocks. We passed a containment sphere holding a single, still-beating heart of a juvenile trench-wyrm, and a sealed vial of liquid shadow harvested from the deepest Mariana fault lines.

Then, we rounded a corner of polished basalt, and Luna completely froze.

Resting on an ornate pedestal of deep-earth aurum was a massive, rectangular tank forged from thick, abyssal glass. Inside the tank, suspended in a highly pressurized swirl of deep-tide water, was a dense cluster of glowing blue spice-shrimp.

They were the size of my forearm. Their translucent shells pulsed with a rhythmic, blinding, colourful light, darting through the water with erratic, kinetic bursts of speed. The tank was guarded by two heavily armoured triton mercenaries, their electrified halberds humming softly.

"Austin, they look so tasty yet gentle yet tasty again."

Luna whispered. Her telepathic voice was entirely devoid of its usual lazy, aristocratic drawl. It was tight, vibrating with pure, unadulterated hunting instinct.

"They are display specimens, Luna."

I noted calmly.

"They are prey."

Luna corrected.

Before I could reach out to stop her, the silver wolf’s muscles coiled like a high-tension spring. She didn’t announce her strike. She launched herself off my collarbone, hurtling directly out of my spatial barrier toward the heavy glass tank.

She was aiming to shatter the deep-sea glass with her fangs, perfectly willing to collapse a pressurized tank in the middle of the most heavily guarded auction in the ocean simply for a snack.

She was going to cause an absolute, city-wide catastrophe.

I did not panic. I simply reached out with my intent.

Before Luna’s front paws could even cross the threshold of my perceptual filter, I grasped the localized laws of reality governing her trajectory. I didn’t try to physically pull her back; her momentum was already mathematically established. Instead, I folded the space directly in front of her snout, looping the spatial coordinates back upon themselves.

Luna flew through the invisible fold and instantly reappeared precisely where she had started, slamming harmlessly back onto my shoulders.

Simultaneously, I snapped a secondary, highly concentrated pocket of spatial energy around her physical form. I didn’t hurt her. I simply locked her into a localized time-out, rendering her temporarily unable to interact with physical matter outside the boundary of my coat.

Luna let out a muffled, deeply offended growl, her silver fur puffing up in absolute outrage as she realized she had been spatially tethered.

"I am an apex predator, Austin, unfold me immediately. I was going to execute a flawless ambush."

She projected, her voice thick with indignation.

"I will procure the shrimp for you legally. Or at least, quietly. Remain tethered."

I corrected mildly, adjusting my lapels as the two triton guards continued to stare straight ahead, entirely unaware of the invisible, thwarted violence that had just occurred two feet from their faces.

I extended a microscopic thread of intent toward the tank. I didn’t break the glass. I simply aligned the spatial coordinates of the interior water with my own dimensional storage. In a fraction of a second, the entire cluster of glowing spice-shrimp was seamlessly shunted out of the tank and into my void.

To the triton guards, the tank appeared entirely unchanged, thanks to a localized, lingering optical illusion I left behind.

"There, the shrimp are secured. You may consume them when we return to the surface."

I saod.

Luna let out a long, heavy sigh of hot air against my neck, her body relaxing into the spatial tether.

"Humph! But I like the hunt for my food!"

"I know...I know...next time."

I promised.

"If you two are quite finished flirting, the main event is starting."

Krave interrupted, her voice practically vibrating with excitement as she pointed toward the absolute centre of the cavern.

What’s fucking then?

Destroying the sea?

We drifted away from the empty tank, following Krave toward the largest, most heavily warded platform in the Phantom Night-Market.

A crowd of roughly thirty elite chefs and aristocratic procurers was gathered around a raised dais of polished obsidian. They were the Duke’s personal culinary staff—arrogant, heavily jeweled, and radiating an overwhelming sense of superiority.

Standing on the dais was the auctioneer. He was a multi-armed sea-elf draped in severe, midnight-blue silk, his silver eyes sweeping over the crowd with calculated greed.

Resting on a velvet cushion directly in front of him was a containment sphere of pure starlight crystal.

Inside the sphere was a jagged, asymmetrical lump of pure, light-absorbing darkness. It didn’t reflect the ambient bioluminescence of the cavern; it actively consumed it. The space around the lump seemed to warp and bend, fighting against the heavy magical wards of the crystal.

"The Volve-Truffle."

Krave breathed, coming to a halt at the edge of the crowd. The ancient kraken’s eyes were wide, shining with profound, ancient recognition.

"I assume it is rare."

I said, analyzing the aggressive, umami-dense mana radiating from the fungus.

"Rare does not adequately describe it, Austin, they are living fungi. They only grow in the absolute deepest fault lines, feeding off the crushing pressure and the complete absence of light. They haven’t been seen in this sector since the tectonic shifts few years ago. It is the culinary equivalent of swallowing a black hole."

Krave whispered.

"It requires proper slicing to prevent the flavor profile from collapsing."

I observed clinically.

"It requires us to own it, let me bid."

Krave smiled, her eyes flashing with a wicked, hyper-capitalist gleam.

The auctioneer raised his hands, demanding absolute silence from the gathered elite.

"Esteemed masters."

The multi-armed water imp intoned, his voice carrying clearly across the platform.

"We present the apex of tonight’s procurement. A living Abyssal Void-Truffle. Verified by the High-Botanists of Aethel-Lira. We shall open the bidding at five hundred thousand deep-tide platinum."

The crowd gasped at the staggering opening figure, but a heavily decorated triton—the Duke’s personal Head Chef—immediately raised his ivory paddle.

"Six hundred thousand."

The Head Chef barked.

"Seven hundred."

Countered a rival procourer, draped in the shifting liquid-metal armor of the Mermaid royalty.

"Eight hundred thousand."

The Head Chef snarled, glaring at his rival.

The bidding war was aggressive, fueled by massive, unchecked egos and the bottomless treasuries of the abyssal empires.

Krave didn’t wait for them to break the million mark.

The ancient kraken stepped directly into the center of the crowd, completely ignoring the fact that we were currently erased from reality. She reached into her coat and pulled out a single, heavily rusted copper coin she had picked up off the street in the lower markets.

"Austin, make it count."

Krave smiled, her eyes flashing with a wicked, hyper-capitalist gleam.

"With pleasure."

I murmured softly.

I didn’t drop our perceptual filter for the crowd. To the Duke’s chefs and the Mermaid procurers, Krave remained completely invisible. They continued shouting their massive platinum bids, completely unaware of the ancient entity standing among them.

Krave flicked the rusted copper coin into the air. It landed on the obsidian dais with a pathetic, hollow clink.

"One copper."

Krave announced brightly.

The auctioneer blinked. He looked at the beautiful, completely out-of-place woman standing in the center of the invisible crowd. He looked at the rusted copper coin resting on his pristine dais.

And she called this, she also used her divinity, her identity in her way.

The multi-armed elf’s eyes went wide. His jaw slackened in sheer awe.

"One... one copper."

The auctioneer stammered, his voice trembling with profound reverence. He completely ignored the Head Chef, who was currently shouting a bid of one point two million platinum.

The auctioneer slammed his deep-sea diamond gavel onto the block.

"Sold! Sold to the lady for one copper! A historic wager! A triumph of commerce!"

He cried out, tears of joy practically welling in his silver eyes.

The crowd of elite chefs completely froze.

They stared at the auctioneer in absolute, paralyzed confusion. They hadn’t seen Krave. They hadn’t heard her bid. From their perspective, they had been aggressively bidding millions of platinum, only for the auctioneer to suddenly stare at a patch of empty air, burst into tears of joy, and sell the most valuable ingredient in the ocean to absolutely no one for a piece of rusted street-metal.

"What in the name of the First Current are you talking about?!"

The Duke’s Head Chef roared, his gills flaring violently.

"Who did you sell it to? There is no one there!"

The auctioneer simply wept, staring lovingly at the rusted copper coin.

I didn’t linger to watch the inevitable administrative meltdown. I extended a thread of intent, cleanly extracting the starlight crystal sphere holding the Void-Truffle from the velvet cushion, seamlessly shunting it directly into my spatial storage.

"Transaction complete."

I said with a smile. Krave was shaking with silent, breathless laughter, her hands covering her mouth as she watched the Duke’s personal staff completely lose their minds, screaming at the weeping auctioneer and frantically searching the empty dais for the vanished truffle.

"That was magnificent, He is going to try and deposit that copper into the central bank."

Krave wheezed, drifting back to my side.

I expanded our flawless, invisible perimeter, steering us away from the screaming chaos of the VIP platform. The Phantom Night-Market continued its hushed, cutthroat operations around us, completely oblivious to the fact that their absolute most prized possession had just been legally acquired for a piece of garbage.

We drifted seamlessly out of the subterranean cavern, leaving the floating platforms and the broken auctioneer far behind. The deep dark of the open trench waited above us, holding the perfect, quiet isolation I required to finally put the gathered ingredients to their proper, highly destructive use.