Chapter 614: The Dust Settles for Now

Chapter 614 -526: The Dust Settles for Now

The scroll felt colder to the touch now, and he could faintly sense a minuscule pulse of energy from within.

He carefully rerolled the Scroll, tied it with a silk thread, and handed it to Roland, his voice weary.

“The sealing is complete, Mr. Rudolph.”

“As long as its structure isn’t forcibly damaged or exposed to an extreme Energy environment, the demiplane within should remain stable for several months. But I don’t recommend long-term storage. You should find a more suitable place to deal with it as soon as possible.”

Roland took the cool Sheepskin Scroll, nodded, and stowed it away safely.

Just then, a stir came from Holland’s direction.

“Hey! Fellas! Look at the goodies I found!”

Holland had finished looting and was squatting beside several lavishly dressed corpses.

Spread out before him was a fairly clean, dark cloak—torn from some unlucky soul—upon which a pile of odds and ends already lay.

His face was flushed, his brown eyes gleaming like a miser counting Gold Coins. The tension from the battle had long been washed away by the joy of his haul.

When he saw Roland and Ellis approaching, he pointed to the spoils on the cloak as if presenting a treasure, launching into a rapid-fire introduction as his fingers danced nimbly between the items.

“First, the hard currency!”

He grabbed a few heavy, jingling pouches and gave them a shake.

“Lifted from these ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies.’ All told, we’ve got… uh, seventy or eighty Golden Crowns, three or four hundred Silver Eagles, and a pile of loose copper coins! This is enough for us to live comfortably for a good while. At least we won’t have to worry about food and lodging on the road!”

He set down the moneybags and picked up several small, exquisite pieces of jewelry.

A silver brooch set with a dark blue gemstone that seemed to shimmer with faint, watery ripples.

A necklace strung on a fine Mithril chain, with a pendant made from a small shard of milky-white bone as smooth and warm as jade.

And a red gold ring carved with an intricate family crest, its band set with tiny diamond chips.

“These baubles…”

Holland lowered his voice, speaking with the certainty of an appraiser.

“They probably have their original owners’ marks or family crests, so they’ll be hard to fence directly. But the materials and craftsmanship alone are worth a pretty penny. This brooch, especially—I can detect a faint ripple of Water Element protection from it. It’s a useful little gadget. And the bone shard on this necklace… it feels unusual. We’ll have to get an expert to take a look at it later.”

Next, his fingers moved to a few more conspicuous items.

A ceremonial dagger, its scabbard inlaid with small rubies and its pommel carved into a roaring wolf’s head. Though it looked flashy and impractical, the scabbard itself was made of expensive materials.

A thick notebook bound in dark brown leather and secured with a silver clasp.

“This dagger is just for show, but the gems can be pried off and sold. As for this notebook…”

He glanced at Ellis.

“Our Master Mage here might be interested. The binding is tough and the lock is high-grade. Who knows, maybe there’s something interesting written inside.”

Finally, he gingerly lifted a flat, palm-sized metal box, meticulously wrapped in dark silk.

The box itself was a dull silver. Its surface was smooth, with no visible keyhole or seams, only a slight circular indentation in the center, as if it required a specific object to be pressed into it.

“This one… I found it in a concealed inner pocket on Mr. Grom.”

Holland’s voice dropped even lower, tinged with a hint of pride.

“He had it hidden real good. I tried to open it, but no luck. I don’t sense any obvious Magic from it, but it’s heavy. The material is definitely not ordinary.”

“This symbol on it… I think I’ve vaguely seen something similar at other stalls in the black market. It might be some kind of token or key.”

He clapped his hands as if to summarize, his face breaking into a wide grin.

“All in all, a great haul! Gleaming coins, jewels we can sell, potentially useful Magic Items, plus this mysterious notebook and a box that won’t open… heheh, this trip to the abandoned mine wasn’t a waste of time! Of course,”

His tone shifted as he looked at Roland and winked.

“You get to decide how to divvy up the lion’s share, Rudolph. That’s the rule in the Dawn Embers, right? The leader has the final say on the spoils.”

Roland waved a hand, cutting short Holland’s enthusiastic presentation.

“That’s enough. Pack everything up. We need to get out of here.”

His voice was quiet. His gaze swept toward the distant mine entrance.

The chaotic sounds from that direction seemed to be getting closer, accompanied by a deeper, more unsettling vibration.

Holland immediately understood, the excitement vanishing from his face.

Without another word, he swiftly bundled everything on the cloak, stuffed the bundle into an empty pack on his back, and tucked the unopenable metal box securely against his body.

The entire process took only a few breaths, his movements practiced as if rehearsed countless times.

Ellis also forced himself to stay alert, scanning their surroundings warily.

Roland, meanwhile, strode over to the still-unconscious Ogre and once again effortlessly hoisted the towering Half-beastman onto his shoulder.

“Go!”

With no further orders, the trio quickly turned and fled. They ran in the opposite direction of the mine entrance, down a small path leading deeper into the ravine and out into the unknown wilderness.

Holland took the lead, guiding them with a vague memory of the terrain and an Adventurer’s intuition.

Ellis followed closely behind, struggling to keep up.

Carrying Ogre, Roland brought up the rear, his steps steady. Just before they left, his gilded, vertical pupils swept one last, deep glance over the clearing behind them—a space piled high with slag and strewn with corpses and the scars of battle. His gaze lingered on the distant, deep mine entrance, which seemed to gasp like a colossal, breathing beast.

The night wind moaned, kicking up dust and the stench of blood from the ground.

The sounds from within the distant mine faded, muffled by the mountainside and the growing distance.

The clearing fell into a dead silence, leaving only a few twisted corpses with their brains sucked dry, and three hollowed impressions in the ground where the Heartstealer remains had once been, still bearing scorch marks and the corrosive traces of Spiritual Energy.

They were a silent testament to the brief and brutal encounter that had just transpired.

However, the silence did not last long.

Moments after Roland and his party had completely vanished into the craggy rocks and the dark of night…

From the deep, light-swallowing maw of the abandoned mine, a figure slowly and silently glided out.

It was the lead Heartstealer.

A faint halo of Spiritual Energy still flowed across its strange, dark-gold gauntlets as its ink-black head slowly turned.

Its void-silver, pupil-less eyes, like the most precise of scanners, slowly swept across the clearing.

Its gaze passed over Grom and the other human corpses without pause.

Finally, its gaze froze upon the three empty patches of ground, where the potent, dissipating traces of Spiritual Energy and a few fragments of carapace remained.

Its head, covered in slick skin, paused for an imperceptible moment.

Around its maw, four primary tentacles and several finer, secondary tendrils began to twitch in unison, a high-frequency, subtle vibration, like antennae that had just picked up a signal.

There was no angry roar, no violent burst of Spiritual Energy.

There was only a deeper, colder, more viscous pressure of Spiritual Energy that spread out from it in silent waves, like a drop of physical ink bleeding into clear water.

Every lingering trace of Energy in the air, every scent molecule, even the faintest tracks and residual heat on the ground—all seemed to be ruthlessly seized, analyzed, and reconstructed by that immense Spiritual Perception.

The night wind seemed to freeze at this moment.

The chirping of insects in the distant wilds abruptly ceased.

Only the Heartstealer remained, like a silent Nightmare emerged from the deepest of dreams, standing motionless amidst the corpses and the empty impressions on the ground.

It became the only “breathing” presence in the shadows of the ravine, an existence that chilled one to the bone.