Chapter 596: Pheonix Egg [Bonus - ]

Chapter 596: Pheonix Egg [Bonus Chapter]

"Because I want a good item for my fifth one!" Kara shot back, throwing her hand up in the air. "Something truly ridiculous... Something that makes me smile every time I pull it out! I need a fifth item that actually changes the board, not another dusty ledger or an antique tea kettle!"

It wasn’t that the vault lacked power as the sheer historical wealth here was staggering.

...The problem was the trade-offs.

Every truly "overpowered" item they had passed came saddled with horrifying catastrophic conditions.

Just thirty minutes ago, in Aisle 85, they’d crossed an ancient pulsing black crystal known as the Ascendant’s Thirst.

The artifact possessed a terrifying authority... if crushed against an Awakened’s sternum, it would forcibly compress their mana meridians, instantly elevating their Core Refinement by an entire Tier!

Kara had practically drooled over it for ten seconds, until she read the second line on the runic plaque.

’Cost of Activation: Permanently consumes ninety percent of the user’s remaining natural lifespan.’

Kara had immediately dropped the crystal back into its velvet box as if it were a burning coal.

What in the seven hells was the point of ascending a core stage if you dropped dead of organ failure three years later?

And then there was the Dread-March War Drum...

A single hand-carved drum fashioned from the tanned hide of an ancient leviathan, belonging to the Third King, Alaric the Unsleeping.

When struck in rhythm, the drum’s soundwaves synchronized the cardiovascular pulse and reaction speed of every allied soldier within a five-mile radius to the drummer’s own tempo, completely overriding their fatigue and rapidly refilling their mana channels.

Alaric had famously used it to force an entire exhausted legion to march and slaughter continuously for fourteen days without a single second of sleep.

...It was undeniably god-tier old technology.

Yet Silas had walked right past it.

Why would he drag a noisy cursed drum around the battlefield when he already had Eluned? The woman’s passive aura naturally nourished the stamina of everyone residing in Blessed Land, gently harmonizing their meridians without turning them into mindless sleep-deprived berserkers...

’Plus... it’s not like there’s an item for immortality sitting on these shelves,’ Silas mused bitterly, crossing his boots on the stone floor.

If there had been an immortality elixir, he could’ve downed it and then smashed the Ascendant’s Thirst against his chest five times over to become an immortal god on the spot.

But true immortality was a cosmic paradox... even the ancient World Kings eventually decayed into bone and dust.

And then there were the items that were simply useless.

The Sixth King, the so-called "Mad Cartographer King," had been a comedy of errors.

The man had spent his entire thirty-year reign obsessed with mapping every square inch of the Sovereign Realm, bankrupting half the treasury to fund endless surveying expeditions into the Great Unknown.

He had ultimately died of frost-rot in a ditch after mapping roughly 0.99% of the continental landmass...

His primary legacy in the vault was the Unfinished Atlas.

An enormous rolled parchment map that magically updated itself in real time to reflect newly discovered geography anywhere in the world but the fatal flaw?

The map only displayed terrain that the Mad King personally believed should exist according to his bizarre fractured theological theories!

If the King believed there was an ocean of chocolate three hundred leagues past the northern border, the map faithfully drew waves of brown syrup, completely ignoring the actual colossal mountain range standing in physical reality.

Modern World Council satellite feeds were roughly ten thousand times more accurate.

...And right beside the useless map was the Needle of the Long Return.

It was a common silver tattooing needle.

The plaque proudly declared that anyone marked with its ink would gain an indelible instinctual homing sense that pointed directly toward the exact plot of earth where they were born, no matter how disoriented, blind, or geographically displaced they became.

Kara had stared at the needle for a solid minute, wondering what kind of idiot would waste a treasure slot on a device that essentially functioned as an un-turn-off-able GPS pointing at their childhood bedroom...

And then there was the Garrulous Blade.

The exact weapon Musvi had warned them about back at the library counter.

Tucked into an iron display stand in Aisle 92 was a beautifully forged, perfectly balanced Tier 3 longsword with a grip wrapped in supple dragon-hide.

The steel was sharp, the mana-conductivity was flawless, and the balance was immaculate.

The only problem was that the sword possessed an awakened ego that literally never shut up...

The second Kara had stepped within five paces of the pedestal, a high-pitched noble voice had echoed directly inside her skull.

’Oh? A customer? A woman? With one arm? Fascinating. Your stance is too wide, girl... Your right shoulder is dropping three millimeters lower than your left... Are you trying to cut wood or fight a war? Look at that silk coat, hideous color, truly... Hey, you see that short woman in the porcelain mask beside you? She’s breathing awfully loud... Why don’t you draw me, take two quick strides, and sever her spine at the third lumbar vertebra? It would be hilarious... Do it... Come on, stab her... Just a little poke...’

Kara had immediately stepped backward, shaking her head in disgust.

The weapon was a glorified psychotic instigator that would drive any sane swordsman to leap off a cliff within forty-eight hours just to escape the commentary.

"I’m bored," Kara announced, leaning her head back against the carved mahogany of her chair until the wood groaned. "Number Five... Can’t an overpowered, game-breaking, effortless divine treasure just magically fall out of the sky and land in my lap?"

"No," Number Five replied from the marble chest, not moving a muscle. "This is a royal repository of historical antiquities, Lord White, not a fairy tale for uneducated toddlers. The universe does not bend to the whims of your impatient—"

CLATTER!

Kara shifted her weight, throwing her right arm over the back of the chair.

Her elbow knocked against the edge of a dusty unpolished wooden crate that had been shoved haphazardly beneath a secondary storage rack behind her.

THUD!

The jolt dislodged something resting precariously on top of the crate.

ROLL... DROP... BANG!

A heavy rounded object tumbled off the shelf, bounced twice across the flagstones with a metallic chime, and rolled directly between Kara’s booted feet, coming to a halt against her heel.

Kara paused as she slowly lowered her chin, looking down at the floor.

Resting against the toe of her left boot was an object roughly the size of an ostrich egg, nearly fourteen inches from tip to base.

It was fashioned entirely of what appeared to be solid unrefined gold.

The surface was remarkably rough, covered in overlapping scale-like ridges that felt cold and inert.

It possessed no glowing runes, no humming mana-frequencies, and no visible enchantments as the egg simply looked like a heavy decorative doorstop that some lazy person had tossed into the shadows centuries ago to keep a storage closet open...

Number Five slowly sat up on the marble chest, peering down through the eyeholes of her mask with a tired dismissive tilt of her head.

"Do not waste your time," Number Five said, waving a limp hand toward the floor. "That is merely an unidentified lump of auric slag salvaged from the volcanic trenches of the southern reaches during the First Era... Our chief alchemists spent three decades attempting to melt it down, crack it open, or extract mana from its core but it is non-reactive to all four primary elements. It has zero conductive value, zero spiritual power, and zero utility so it is cataloged as useless scrap metal."

Kara didn’t answer as she leaned down from the chair, extending her single right hand with her calloused fingers wrapping around the cold textured gold scales.

The moment her flesh made direct contact with the surface—

BZZZZZZZT!

A sharp translucent blue interface abruptly materialized in the empty air right before Kara’s eyes, flashing with urgent crystalline clarity.

[System Notice: You have discovered a Phoenix’s Egg!]

[Tier]: Divine Beast (Unranked)

[Status]: Lifeless / In Stasis

Kara’s hand froze.

Her breath caught in her throat, her dark eyes dilating as she stared at the glowing blue text.

’A Phoenix...?’ Silas thought, his heart thumping hard against his ribs.

Before he could even process the words, a secondary data-tab unfolded beneath the primary notice, rapidly detailing the lore of the entity.

[Entity Analysis:] Primordial Phoenix

[An ancient apex avian entity originating from the boundless celestial sea of the higher realms... Possesses an innate command over the flames of absolute rebirth, capable of cycling physical destruction into immortal vitality. Highly revered across all ancient civilizations as a supreme guardian.]

Silas’s mind raced through the descriptions.

It aligned almost beat-for-beat with the mythological legends of his past life, a terrifying immortal bird of divine flame, wielding the authority of resurrection and eternal fire.

Yet looking at the egg resting in his palm, Silas noted the disturbing status tag... [Lifeless / In Stasis].

’If it’s a legendary divine beast... why hasn’t it hatched?’ Silas queried internally, his thoughts probing the System. ’Why does it feel like a cold block of lead?’

PING!

The System interface responded with a crisp update.

[Query Resolution: Hatching Prerequisites]

[The Primordial Phoenix is an entity born of boundless celestial light and natural vibrancy... The egg cannot hatch within cold, lightless environments, nor can it process standard elemental fire.]

[Current Condition: The embryonic soul has fallen into a state of suspended pseudo-death due to prolonged starvation of natural power.]

[Hatching Requirement: The egg requires immersion within a domain saturated with pure concentrated Nature Mana and high-tier vegetative life-force... Upon sufficient saturation, the dormant embryonic flame will ignite, triggering immediate incubation.]

Kara slowly retracted her hand, straightening up in the chair with the heavy golden egg cradled securely against her ribs.

’Nature Mana...’ Silas mused with a wild incredulous grin spreading across Kara’s face.

The World Council’s alchemists had failed to crack it because they were treating it like an alchemical metal.

They’d blasted it with fire spells, soaked it in acid, and tried to channel raw mana into its shell, in a cold sterile lightless vault buried miles beneath an ocean trench...

To a creature born of living sunlight and natural blooming vitality, this vault was a tomb.

’And where in the seven hells am I going to find pure concentrated Nature Mana?’ Silas thought, laughing inwardly at the miraculous absurdity of the universe. ’Elu.’

Eluned was a living Goddess, the embodiment of pristine nature, forest vitality, and untamed vegetative growth.

Blessed Land was practically bathed in her passive aura!

’I don’t need a team of high-tier alchemists,’ Silas realized, his fingers gently tracing the golden scales. ’Elu can help me hatch it... I just need to take this egg back to my territory, dig a nice little hole in the soft soil right beneath Eluned’s sacred roots, let her pour an hour’s worth of pure forest mana into the shell, and watch the damned thing hatch or let her hatch it herself.’

A divine immortal Phoenix soaring over the battlements of Blessed Land...?

A guardian beast that could incinerate entire siege engines with celestial fire and cheat death through the flames of rebirth...?

Kara looked up from the egg, locking her dark eyes onto Number Five with a broad beaming and completely shameless smile.

"I want this," Kara declared, tapping the golden shell with her knuckle with a satisfying clink. "This is my fifth item."

Number Five sat up on the marble chest, blinking through the eyeholes of her mask.

"Sure," Number Five replied instantly with her voice flat then the small woman paused.

She sat bolt upright on the slab, her head cocking to the side as the realization clicked into her brain.

’Five items...’ Number Five thought, a sudden blinding wave of pure euphoric relief washing through her marrow. ’She picked five... That’s five! It’s over... The nightmare is over!’

A visible dramatic transformation swept over the short woman’s posture.

Her shoulders dropped their tension, her spine straightened, and when she spoke, her muffled voice carried a bright bubbly almost musical excitement that sounded completely alien coming from beneath a grim porcelain mask.

"Splendid!" Number Five cheered, clapping her small hands together with a sharp joyous clap. "An exceptional choice! A truly magnificent decorative doorstop! Truly, your aesthetic refinement knows no bounds, Lord White! Allow me to offer my sincerest, most heartfelt congratulations on concluding your selection!"

Kara let out a low chuckle, slipping the heavy Phoenix Egg into her Lord Inventory, where it vanished into the void alongside her new books, the Ash Gauntlet, and Tor’s Death Mask.

"You really couldn’t wait to get rid of me, could you?" Kara teased, rising from the creaking chair.

Number Five jumped down from the marble chest, landing lightly on her feet, dusting off her midnight-silk robes with quick cheerful pats.

"I would rather wrestle a leviathan in my nightgown than spend another forty seconds in this aisle with you, Lord White..." Number Five admitted freely, her porcelain mask tilting up with what felt like a radiant unseen smile. "However... in all seriousness... perhaps at another juncture, under more agreeable circumstances, we can come back here for more items... The Council’s records are vast, and should you fulfill your role as Humanity’s Hero with proper diligence... who knows? Perhaps the deeper wings may open for you once more."

Kara offered the short woman a genuine respectful nod.

"Thanks, shorty," Kara said. "You were a pretty decent guide. For a bureaucrat, anyway."

Number Five paused, looking up at the broad-shouldered woman.

A soft quiet warmth seemed to settle over the small Council Head with her posture softening by a fraction.

"Thank you, Kara White," Number Five murmured softly, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "It was... surprisingly... quite fun."

Kara opened her mouth to reply...

PING!

The spatial extraction runes embedded into ground below her violently ignited.

’They weren’t here befor—’