Chapter 593: Trash Items [Bonus - ]

Chapter 593: Trash Items [Bonus Chapter]

It was a colossal circular vault door, spanning nearly thirty feet in diameter, set deep into the surrounding mountain of black stone.

It looked less like an entrance to a treasury and more like the primary blast gate of an ancient planetary bunker.

The face of the door was forged from solid lightless void-iron, completely seamless, save for thousands of glowing white runes that twisted across its surface in a massive slowly rotating labyrinth of runic geometry.

At the exact center of the wheel sat an intricate star-shaped keyhole surrounded by three rings of rotating mechanical tumblers.

Kara stopped three paces back, tilting her head up to study the immense structure.

"Imposing," Kara commented, her eyes tracing the intricate flow of mana through the white runes. "Looks like something built to survive an asteroid strike."

"It has survived far worse than that," Number Five said softly, stopping directly before the central mechanism.

She turned slightly, looking back at Kara through the eyeholes of her porcelain mask.

"The World Vault was not designed to keep out common thieves or opportunistic scions..." the woman explained, her tone dropping into a grave solemn tone. "It was constructed to contain artifacts so volatile, so fundamentally hazardous to terrestrial reality, that even the World Council dares not unleash them upon the surface... The outer barrier is woven with high-tier countermeasures."

To illustrate her point, Number Five raised her left arm but she didn’t use mana and she didn’t channel a defensive shroud as well.

She simply extended her open left palm forward, casually pressing her bare unadorned fingertips against the surface of the void-iron door.

SNAP!

There was no sound of a spell firing.

SPLAT-CRUNCH!

In the span of a single horrifying microsecond, Number Five’s entire left hand, from the tips of her slender fingers all the way up to the middle of her forearm, violently ceased to exist.

The flesh, the muscle tissue, the marrow, and the skeletal bones detonated outward in an instantaneous shower of dark crimson blood, severed tendon, and pulverized bone fragments that splattered violently across the black flagstones.

Kara’s eyes widened slightly with her boots remaining firmly rooted, though Silas’s internal reflexes screamed at the sudden violence however Number Five did not flinch.

Hell she didn’t even let out a grunt of pain.

WHOOSH!

A faint pale crimson luminescence sparked from the severed stump of her left arm and in the blink of an eye, the blood vanished.

New marrow shot outward like growing crystal, fresh white bone knitted together with rapid sickening clicks, crimson muscle fibers braided over the skeletal frame like living thread, and pale flawless skin sealed over the flesh with a soft clean pop.

Within two seconds, her left hand was completely restored looking pale and undamaged.

She flexed her fingers once then twice, before pulling them back inside her silk sleeve.

"The peripheral wards," Number Five said calmly, as if she had just brushed a fly off her shoulder, "are keyed to spatial rejection... If any living entity attempts to force entry without the verified master key, the barrier does not repel them. It just unravels the physical matter of whatever touches the surface and should an intruder manage to breach the secondary mechanical seals through brute force..."

She paused, gesturing toward the slowly rotating white runes.

"...the entire internal core of the door is permanently saturated with the ancient concept of Destruction... The same absolute authority wielded by the World King. It will not merely destroy the physical body, it will obliterate the soul, erasing the trespasser’s existence from the dimensional record entirely."

Kara stared at the pristine void-iron door, then glanced down at the woman’s newly regenerated hand.

"Good to know," Kara muttered, crossing her single arm over her chest. "Remind me not to lean on the walls."

Number Five turned back to the center of the door.

She reached into her sleeve, withdrawing the nine-inch iridescent violet key.

With steady precision, she slid the twisting clockwork shaft deep into the star-shaped keyhole at the center of the rotating tumblers.

CLINK!

The key slid in to the hilt without the slightest resistance.

Number Five grasped the ornate horn-shaped bow with both hands, planting her boots wide on the flagstones, and slowly rotated the key a quarter-turn to the right.

TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK... CLACK!

A deafening chime resonated from deep within the void-iron!

The thousands of glowing white runes across the thirty-foot face violently flared with their light shifting from stark white to a deep smoldering gold.

The three rings of mechanical tumblers began to spin in opposing directions, grinding together with the earth-shattering roar of an industrial forge.

RUMBLE-CRUNCH!

Deep within the bedrock, massive counterweights shifted.

Hydraulic seals released with a colossal pressurized hiss that blasted a freezing cloud of dry nitrogen across their shins.

HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

The massive circular door slowly unlocked, splitting down the center along an invisible jagged seam, and retreated backward into the stone walls with the agonizing ponderous weight of a shifting tectonic plate.

Number Five withdrew the key, tucking it away, and gestured toward the gaping dark threshold.

"Enter, Lord of Blessed Land," Number Five commanded softly. "Welcome to the World Vault..."

Kara stepped across the threshold.

THUD-CLANG!

The second her rear boot cleared the entryway, the massive void-iron doors slammed shut behind them with a cataclysmic deafening roar.

BOOM!

The locking tumblers spun instantly into place with the golden runes shifting back to cold lethal white, sealing them completely inside the subterranean depths but Kara didn’t look back.

She stood at the edge of a massive elevated stone observation balcony, looking out over the expanse before her.

Her breath caught in her throat.

"Well, damn," Kara breathed softly, her half-lidded eyes widening as she drank in the incomprehensible scale of the chamber.

This place simply wasn’t a room... It was an underground continent.

The ceiling arched hundreds of feet overhead, supported by colossal pillars of glowing translucent quartz that cast a soft ethereal azure luminescence across the entire expanse.

The air was dead quiet and preserved under a stasis spell that suspended the decay of time itself.

Stretching out from the base of the balcony, extending far beyond the horizon of the azure light, were endless straight rows of massive star-iron shelving units, glass display pedestals, and sealed stasis vaults.

Each row was broad enough to drive three war chariots abreast, flanked by towering banners of tattered ancient silk bearing imperial crests from long-dead dynasties.

Carved into the black stone flagstones at the entrance of each corridor was a glowing runic numeral.

Kara glanced down at the nearest aisle markers.

[Aisle 1. Aisle 2. Aisle 3.]

Her dark eyes drifted along the endless curving perspective lines, tracking the numbers into the distant blue-lit gloom.

[...Aisle 496. Aisle 497. Aisle 498.]

Kara’s eyelid gave a tiny involuntary twitch.

"That’s a shit ton of stuff," Kara muttered, completely abandoning any pretense of eloquence.

Number Five stepped up beside her on the balcony, leaning her small forearms against the carved stone balustrade with a long world-weary sigh.

"Four hundred and ninety-eight primary aisles," Number Five confirmed, her voice muffled and dry beneath the porcelain mask. "Containing roughly eighty-four thousand cataloged artifacts, reliquaries, ancestral armaments, and forbidden treatises salvaged from the First and Second Eras... It is an administrative nightmare of catastrophic proportions as the sorting manifests alone span three hundred volumes of paper, and half of the original scribes were executed for treason before they finished cross-referencing the fourth wing."

She turned her featureless mask toward Kara.

"I will act as your guide," Number Five said flatly. "I have walked these aisles for centuries so I know the inventory of this vault better than the living monarchs know their own treasuries... If you wander through these corridors unassisted, you will waste three weeks simply reading the identifying plaques."

Kara glanced down at the short woman with a skeptical tilt to her lips.

’Four hundred and ninety-eight aisles...’ Silas thought, genuinely impressed despite himself. ’And an aisle isn’t just a shelf... it’s an entire section packed with vaults, pedestals, and containment alcoves. To memorize the locations and properties of tens of thousands of classified artifacts... how absurdly good is this woman’s memory?’

"Lead the way, shorty," Kara smiled, gesturing forward with her single right hand. "Show me what humanity has been hoarding in the dark."

They descended the grand stone staircase with their boots clicking rhythmically against the pristine flagstones, stepping into the mouth of the first primary corridor.

The air grew noticeably cooler as they walked.

Number Five led the way with brisk mechanical strides, her midnight-silk robes sweeping gracefully over the stone, pointing out the displays with her left hand as they passed.

"The initial sector, spanning Aisle 1 through Aisle 50, houses relics, administrative ledgers, and standard military armaments produced during the regime of the Second World King," Number Five explained, her cadence returning to that of a dispassionate lecturer. "An era marked by extensive territorial consolidation, centralism, and the initial establishment of the Nine Powers’ sovereign borders..."

Kara glanced down a side corridor with her half-lidded eyes scanning the glass display cases.

Rows of polished silver swords, ornate ceremonial cuirasses, gilded scepters, and stacked bundles of ancient treaties rested under preservation wards, looking as pristine as the day they were placed there.

"What about the First King?" Kara asked, glancing down at the short woman. "Where are the relics from the First King’s regime?"

Number Five paused, her head tilting slightly.

"The First King’s artifacts are housed in the deepest and most restricted sectors of the lower vaults," Number Five replied, her tone dipping into a strange cautious hush. "Beyond Aisle 450... However... remarkably few of the items produced during the First King’s era possess any practical military utility."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "Why? Wasn’t he the apex? The legendary founder who unified humanity during the apocalypse?"

"He was an undisputed genius," Number Five said simply. "A visionary who comprehended the mechanics of the soul and the dimensional threshold far beyond anyone before or since but he was also... catastrophically unhinged."

She gave a small dismissive shake of her head.

"Most of the scrolls and tablets preserved from his private sanctum are nothing more than hundreds of volumes of frantic paranoid ramblings... Speculative treatises on trans-dimensional parasitic entities, incoherent mathematical formulas describing the death of the cosmos, and bizarre mechanical blueprints for devices that have no logical function in this reality... He was so brilliant that his mind operated entirely outside the boundaries of human sanity and the Council preserves them out of historical reverence, but as functional weapons, they are largely useless."

"Fair enough," Kara chuckled. "Genius and madness usually share a bunk."

Number Five stopped abruptly in front of a wide elevated display pedestal lined with black velvet, gesturing toward five distinct objects resting beneath glowing blue containment fields.

"In the interest of efficiency," Number Five said, turning toward Kara, "I have pre-selected five exceptional artifacts from the Second Era. Each represents the pinnacle of standard imperial craftsmanship. If you select these five, we may conclude this transaction within minutes and return to the assembly..."

Kara stepped up to the pedestal, looking down at the offerings.

The moment her gaze locked onto the first object, a translucent runic interface flickered before her eyes, displaying the artifact’s classified registry data:

[Item: Old Spirit Sword]

[Tier]: Tier 2 Weapon (Rare)

[Description]: A high-grade officer’s rapier forged during the mid-Second Era... Quenched in the blood of underground frost-drakes and inlaid with refined silversteel filigree to facilitate rapid mana conduction.

[Durability]: 85 / 100

Kara stared at the sword and she blinked.

’A Tier 2 rapier?’ Silas thought, his brow furrowing in sheer disbelief. ’She’s offering me a standard factory-stamped officer’s blade? I have apprentices in the Blessed Land smithy who hammer out better conductive steel before their morning tea...’

She shifted her gaze to the second item on the velvet cloth:

[Item: Bulwark of the Iron Vanguard]

[Tier]: Tier 2 Armor (Rare)

[Description]: A heavy kite shield forged from multi-layered star-iron plating. Engraved with kinetic deflection runes capable of reducing physical concussive force by up to fifteen percent.

[Durability]: 120 / 150

’A heavy shield that reduces force by fifteen percent?’ Kara thought, her left eyelid beginning to twitch with mounting irritation. ’A common boulder from the Umbral Basin has better defensive properties than this piece of scrap metal!’

Well that was a lie but still...

She looked at the third item.

[Item: Amulet of the Starlight Well]

[Tier]: Tier 2 Accessory (Rare)

[Description]: A polished silver pendant set with a low-grade astral quartz. Passively increases the bearer’s natural mana regeneration rate by five percent while resting within an illuminated environment.

[Durability]: 40 / 50

’Five percent mana regeneration... only while resting in the light?’ Silas screamed internally. ’Are you joking?! An apple dipped in sugar water gives a better energy boost than this ridiculous necklace!’

She glared at the fourth item.

[Item: Boots of the Wind-Strider]

[Tier]: Tier 2 Armor (Rare)

[Description]: Supple leather boots reinforced with the tendons of northern prairie deer. Slightly reduces the bearer’s physical fatigue while sprinting across flat, unobstructed terrain.

[Durability]: 60 / 75

And finally, the fifth item.

[Item: Elixir of the Minor Titan]

[Tier]: Tier 2 Consumable (Rare)

[Description]: A concentrated alchemical brew refined from ground earth-wyrm scales. Temporarily increases raw physical musculature by ten percent for a duration of twenty minutes. Induces severe muscle cramping and violent nausea upon expiration.

[Durability]: 1 / 1

Silence descended over the black velvet display pedestal as Kara stood completely motionless with her single right hand resting on her hip and her half-lidded eyes slowly lifting from the five pathetic trinkets to lock dead-center onto Number Five’s porcelain mask.

"Number Five," Kara said, her voice dropping into a low terrifyingly calm tone.

"Yes, Lord White?" Number Five replied, her hands tucked neatly into her sleeves. "Are these not magnificent treasures? The craftsmanship of the Second Era is renowned for its elegance."

"Do I look like an idiot to you?" Kara asked flatly.