The Guardian gods Chapter 928

Face after face twisted as the brutal truth settled in, many of them had already lost before the auction had even begun. They had spent weeks hoarding their wealth, barricading themselves inside their domains, convinced their treasures would be sufficient to buy whatever power they desired.

Now, poisoned by bitter hindsight, they cursed their own caution. They realized they should never have stayed cooped up in their homes, they should have taken the risks, hunted the blood, and seized the raw power out in the open world while they still had the chance.

The bitter sting of regret burned hottest among those who had stayed their hands out of caution. Those few paragons who wore raw, unfiltered greed on their faces were the ones who held actual law shards in their hands, to them, the towers felt close, just an arms reach away, because the true currency required was not mere gold or mortal artifacts, but that which they hold.

The ones truly at a catastrophic loss were the great human kingdoms.

Bound by the rigid constraints of their high status and standing, they could never afford to stoop to the brutal savagery that had bloodied the world over the past two months. They had been forced to play it by the book, attempting the legal, civilized route, pooling their vast national treasuries together and hoping mountainous piles of mortal wealth would guarantee a victory in the auction.

But as the deep insight from the monuments settled into their minds, the illusion shattered. They realized with chilling clarity that this was not something that could be bought with mortal riches. The towers demanded a toll no kingdom’s vault could provide.

Panicked, their leaders turned their gazes toward the godlings, expecting to find the same crushing despair mirrored in their eyes. After all, none of the godling race had partook in the open violence of the past two months either.

Instead, when their eyes met, a cold jolt spiked through their hearts.

The godlings weren’t despairing, they were staring right back at them, their expressions sharp, calculating, and seemingly reading every panicked thought running through the humans’ minds. A single, heavy-laden nod passed silently between the two factions before both parties swiftly looked away, breaking eye contact.

Yet, despite the grim reality surrounding them, a sudden, desperate glint of hope ignited within the hearts of the higher human kingdoms.

For reasons they dared not voice aloud, they suddenly saw a narrow, terrifying path toward a miracle.

"You all have now gained insight and awareness," Tide spoke, his voice cutting effortlessly through the murmurs of the theater. "And with that awareness comes understanding. Let the auction begin."

The heavy silence that followed Tide’s declaration shattered instantly.

In its place surged the desperate, clawing urgency of beings who suddenly understood that the very foundation of their future survival hung entirely in the balance.

"One complete shard of the Law of Thermal Taxation!" a voice roared from a high cloud stand, cutting through the murmurs like a blade. "With the paragon’s complete soul to accompany it!"

Before the echo of the bid could even fade into the mists, a booming counter-offer erupted from the western amphitheater.

"Two shards of Law!" the voice bellowed back, a raw edge of hunger in the tone. "With two paragons complete souls to accompany it!"

Just like that, the floodgates opened. The brutal tone of the auction was set before the proceedings could even truly take off. Down in the lower tiers, many paragons slumped hopelessly in their cloud-seats, their hearts turning to lead the moment they realized the baseline currency required just to enter the bidding war was an actual law shard.

Law shards were never treasures that could be bought with mountains of gold or national treasuries, they were trophies of impossible murder, violently ripped from the very essence of a fallen paragon. Out of hundreds of paragon gathered in this space, barely ten could truly claim to hold such a prize.

For a long stretch, only the voices of those elite few echoed across the theater. Tide sat in complete silence, offering no commentary as murmurs of doubt, hostility, and thinly veiled threats began to ripple through the cloud-stands. The participants were starting to closely analyze and scrutinize the actual value of the law shards their peers were tossing into the ring.

It had since recently became apparent that not all laws possessed equal weight.

"What need does a basic combustion law serve anyone, except to explode and blow things up?" a frustrated paragon roared from his cloud-seat, pointing an accusing finger across the theater. "Any one of us here is more than capable of making things combust on our own!"

The targeted paragon bristled, his face twisting with defensive anger as he gestured wildly toward Tide’s elevated platform, as if terrified the giant god might underestimate his offering.

"It is no simple combustion, you fool!" he shot back, his voice cutting through the rising din. "The wretch I ripped this from named it the law of combustion mandate. Secrets, spoken lies, and volatile emotions spontaneously manifest as physical flames through it! If a creature harbors even a drop of deceit in their heart, their chest literally begins to char from the inside out!"

"A lie detector, then?" another paragon scoffed, shaking his head in sheer disbelief. "A glorified truth-teller dressed up in the fancy, pompous name of a conceptual law?"

Such heated banter rippled back and forth across the sea of clouds, the tension steadily mounting until Tide finally raised his massive hands and brought his palms together with a deafening CLAP.

The thunderous sound instantly cut through the noise, snapping every eye back to the front.

"There is no need for such endless bickering over which laws hold value and which do not," Tide said, offering a slow, dismissive shake of his head.

"There are mechanisms provided by this place, governed by the higher laws overseeing this auction, specifically designed to settle debates like this."

As he spoke, a heavy, ancient scale materialized in Tide’s open palm. At the exact same moment, a single, glowing feather manifested in the massive hand of Krogan.

Tide gestured toward the feather resting in his companion’s grip. "This feather represents the true worth of these towers."

He leaned forward and gently placed the feather onto one side of the scale. "To ensure absolute fairness regarding what you believe your treasures are actually worth... match them against this."

The scale descended into the center of the theater, hovering suspended in midair for all to see. A profound, breathless silence fell over the cloud-stands as everyone locked their eyes onto the simple feather and the ancient scale. It was the first time any of them had witnessed such an act, but they would have to be utter fools to mistake the feather for a mere bird’s feather.

A figure rose from the lower cloud-stands, drawing an immediate ripple of recognition across the theater. It was the very same third paragon, the one who had slipped through the chaos, snatched the twin soul shards from the battle that occured in, and vanished. He had made it to the auction.

As every eye locked onto him, he stepped off his cloud-seat, soaring smoothly through the air until he landed before the floating scale at the center of the arena.

A heavy silence fell over the gathering, dozens of breaths held in unison as the paragon reached into his cloak and pulled out the first law shard. With only a brief moment of hesitation, he dropped it onto the empty pan opposite the divine feather.

The shard clinked against the metal and settled, but it sank only a fraction, the feather side remaining stubbornly, heavily aloft.

Without a single word being spoken, the message was painfully clear to everyone watching, the feather held vastly more worth than the singular law shard.

Faced with the judgment of the scale, the paragon did not falter. Without missing a beat, he withdrew the second shard he had stolen from the void and placed it onto the scale alongside the first.

A sudden, sharp shift rippled through the balance.

The scale groaned, the two pans tilting downward as the heavy load brought them nearly level with the feather. At a glance, it appeared as though the twin shards and the divine feather were finally of equal value, a perfect equilibrium.

Yet, as the nervous onlookers leaned in closer, straining their eyes, they noticed the subtle truth, the feather’s side still, by a hair’s breadth, remained on top.

While the assembly of paragons stared in mounting horror at the scale, Tide perceived an entirely different reality through his divine sight. Where they saw a near-equal failure, Tide saw a precise ledger. He calculated that the two stolen shards held enough intrinsic value to trade for all the foundational materials needed to build a tower, along with half of the vital, high-tier component materials required for the tower to work.