Hearing Barat’s question, Ian thought for a moment and asked, “I heard you have auctions here?”


    “Of course!” Barat said proudly. “In fact, the auctions here in Golden City are thergest in the world. Because we frequently gather arge number of wealthy individuals, many rare treasures are sent here for auction!”


    Ian wasn’t too concerned about those treasures. He asked, “Do you auction Devil Fruits here?”


    “Yes, we do!” Barat nodded. “Every year, more than twenty Devil Fruits are auctioned off from the Gran Tesoro. And you came at the right time. Recently, the auction has collected three Devil Fruits, all of which were brought here by pirates who managed to obtain them. They are set to be the highlights of the auctions over the next three weeks!”


    Ian was a bit surprised and asked, “So many? Does this mean you also help the Navy and the World Government collect Devil Fruits?”


    Barat smiled and didn’t answer directly, but her expression clearly acknowledged it. Sheughed and said, “Lord Ian, are you also interested in Devil Fruits? Aren’t you already a Devil Fruit user?”


    “Hehe, there are many in my pirate crew who aren’t Devil Fruit users yet!” Ian replied.


    “The auction is happening today! One of the Devil Fruits will be presented at the end. If you’re interested, I can take you there right now!” Barat said.


    “Then let’s go!” Ian nodded. “Do you know which Devil Fruit will appear this time?”    “I’m not too sure!” Barat replied. “I haven’t really paid attention to those minor details!”


    After speaking, Barat raised her wrist and called on her wrist-mounted baby Den Den Mushi. Shortly, one of Tesoro’s subordinates arrived with a shy-looking car!


    This car was powered by a group of very peculiar animals—strange turtles!


    Ian sat in the passenger seat while Barat drove. They traversed most of the Gran Tesoro ship and finally stopped in front of a tall building.


    Ian followed Barat out of the car. The guards at the entrance, armed with guns, immediately bowed and made way for them upon seeing Barat. Barat led Ian through the lobby and into the auction hall.


    The auction had already started, and many items had already been sold. Ian nced around the room and noticed that the attendees were mostly corpulent individuals who looked like aristocrats. The men leaned on canes and wore top hats, while the women wore long dresses adorned with luxurious jewelry, looking radiant and morous.


    Ian’s outfit stood out like a sore thumb in this setting, drawing quite a bit of attention. However, with his sunsses on and his hat removed, no one recognized him. Seeing that he was apanied by Barat, the attendees assumed he was some noble from another country and didn’t pay him much mind.


    With Barat apanying him, Ian didn’t need to pay any security deposit. After sitting down, Barat handed him an auction catalog and exined the auction rules.


    The bidding was not done by calling out prices directly but by using hand signals, which were quiteplicated. For example, raising one finger with the palm facing forward meant adding 100.000 Beli, while raising one finger with the palm facing backward meant doubling the current price! Those unfamiliar with these bidding gestures could easily make mistakes.


    Ian casually flipped through the auction catalog and found that the earlier items were all jewelry and antiques, followed by some famous paintings. He had no interest in these, so he skipped to the end and finally saw the Devil Fruit.


    It was a yellowish-brown fruit, with the characteristic spiral patterns that all Devil Fruits had. The fruit’s appearance resembled an orange, and Ian thought that Nami would probably like it.


    This Devil Fruit seemed to have been identified in the catalog, and it was determined to be the Paramecia-type Shrivel Shrivel Fruit!


    As the name suggests, the Shrivel Shrivel Fruit can turn any object it touches into a shriveled state, whether it’s a person or an object. The ability is somewhat simr to Crocodile’s Sand Sand Fruit, which absorbs moisture from the body. Although it requires physical contact to activate, it’s considered quite a powerful fruit.


    Unfortunately, Ian wasn’t interested in the fruit’s ability. The reason he had Barat bring him to bid on the Devil Fruit was to buy it and have the system absorb it to upgrade his main character card.


    To date, Ian had only absorbed one Devil Fruit, so his main character card was still just a green card. Now that he had money, he naturally wanted to make up for this shoring.


    Since it was for absorption, the fruit’s ability didn’t matter much. Ideally, he would find a fruit with a rtively useless ability to absorb, but he didn’t have the luxury of being picky. He would take whatever he could get.


    Ian estimated that the fruit would cost around one billion Beli. He nced at the current auction item, which turned out to be a fist-sized sapphire, then closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair with his legs crossed, and said to Barat, “Call me when they start auctioning the Devil Fruit.”


    With that, he focused his attention on refreshing the card shop in his mind.


    Noticing that Ian had no interest in jewelry, Barat was quite surprised. By all ounts, someone like Ian, with his Currency- Currency Fruit ability, should be interested in anything that could bring him wealth. But it turned out that Barat’s assumptions were entirely wrong. What was even more surprising was that despite having a sexy beauty like her sitting beside him, Ian closed his eyes and rested, not even sparing her a nce!


    Sensing Ian’s subtle wariness towards her, Barat felt a bit troubled. How were they supposed tomunicate moving forward?


    Ian, however, paid no mind to Barat’s internal conflict. He was busy refreshing the card shop, browsing through the card fragments that appeared, and considering which card he should prioritize collecting.


    In fact, Ian was contemting not only cing an original five-star card in his sixth card slot but also whether he should rece the Iori Yagami card.


    The reason was simple: the abilities of the Iori Yagami card and the Hiei card were redundant!


    Both cards had me-based abilities, but Ian found himself using Hiei’s Demon World me far more frequently. Although Iori Yagami’s blue mes had a time-freezing effect, the opportunity to actually use this effect was quite rare.


    If he could burn his opponents to death with high temperature mes, why would he need to freeze them?


    Especially since, as Ian gradually adapted to the abilities of the Iori Yagami card, he could already use the Demon World me to execute the Dark Hook and unleash the Hyaku Shiki Oniyaki. The extra me type didn’t seem particrly useful, so Ian was considering switching to a different ability.


    Ian closed his eyes and pretended to rest, slowly refreshing the card shop using diamonds. Now that he had plenty of diamonds and time, he could browse at his leisure.


    “Hmm… Four-star Devil May Cry Dante card fragment… Ugh, should I buy it or not?”


    “Oh, War from Darksiders: the youngest of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Impressive, but it doesn’t suit my image at all. Pass!”


    “A fragment of Storm Goenitz? Hmm, this is good. The bond attributes can be used, and a wind-type ability seems like a good choice. I’ll consider keeping it! Buy!”


    As he continued refreshing, Ian was suddenly startled and couldn’t help but open his eyes!


    Barat had been watching him all along. Seeing him suddenly open his eyes, she couldn’t help but ask, “What’s wrong?”


    “Nothing!” Ian shook his head and closed his eyes again, though his heart was now beating much faster.


    The reason was that during the recent refresh, he discovered a four-star card fragment in the card fragment shop that had never appeared before!


    This card fragment was from… Dragon Balls! And it was Trunks (Future version)!


    Ian had previously drawn a Master Roshi card, but since that card’s star level was too low, he hadn’t paid much attention to it. However, it made him realize that the card library did indeed include Dragon Ball series cards!


    However, in subsequent ten-draws, Ian rarely pulled Dragon Ball series cards.


    He knew this was because hecked the basic martial arts skills required for the Dragon Ball series cards, which primarily required martial arts as the prerequisite ability!


    But there was no way around it. Ian had been practicing swordsmanship for so many years that it was hard to change. He was ustomed to fighting with swordsmanship. Suddenly abandoning his sword to punch people would be impossible for him.


    This made Ian quite regretful because he really liked Super Saiyans. Although he understood that the Super Saiyan cards in the card system would likely just massively boost attributes, it didn’t diminish Ian’s admiration for Super Saiyans.


    After all, the Super Saiyan form was just so incredibly cool…


    However, surprises oftene when you least expect them. He hadn’t anticipated that the system’s card library would include Future Trunks!


    Future Trunks might be the only card Ian could refresh without having an extraordinary stroke of luck because Future Trunks also had swordsmanship, which matched Ian’s basic skills.


    Ian guessed that the card had probably appeared before when the system did the refreshing for him, but due to time constraints, he hadn’t been able to browse through them personally and missed it. Now that he was refreshing slowly on his own, he finally noticed this card’s existence.


    Ian was instantly thrilled!


    Even if it’s Future Trunks, he still has Super Saiyan blood! This card undoubtedly had Super Saiyan abilities!


    Buy it! I’m not short on money now! I have toplete this collection!