Chapter 41: The Dragon Vault

-Dragon Vault-

Deep in the underground of a world that spanned the distance of countless suns, lay a vast expansive cave network. This cave network stretched out and crisscrossed through the entire planet. It had caves as big as the entire planet of Ascension.

In a shallow part of this cave system, far and distant from any other underground caves, was a relatively tiny cavern. This cave spanned only a few hundred kilometres and was carved entirely from a shiny black rock.

In the centre of the cave was a grand temple that filled only a few kilometres in height, length and width. In a room of this temple was a wall that had a great big red pool filled with swirling red water that defied gravity.

The room, and the entire temple, were shrouded in the pitch black darkness of the underground. However, strangely, torches mounted on walls, both inside and outside the temple, started to magically light up and bathed the temple in flickering light.

Moments after, a body was launched out of the red pool and slid half way across the room using its face as its breaks. When it finally came to a stop, the person stood up and started dusting his clothes off and wiped the blood rushing from his nose and lip.

This person was naturally James, who had been launched through the gateway by a firm kick in the bum from Artimus.

Once he’d assessed himself and his surroundings, James released his scrying field. Moments later, a strange expression crossed his face as he started mumbling. “humph! That devious old goat! No wonder he had no problems with sending us here. Something in this place is blocking my scrying field.”

After a few more attempts to release his scrying field, only to have it fizzle out the moment it touched one of the pitch black walls, James flicked his hand. Naturally, James had made a primitive storage ring after the others had made a trip to the black lands.

With simply an instant of targeting his scrying field on it, he pulled out 10 little metal balls which magically appeared in his hand. These balls were about the size of a ping pong ball, and their surfaces were filled with intricate array carvings.

Jasmine immediately took control of these little machines, and they all began to lightly glow and hover up into the air letting off a little hum as they started buzzing around the room and releasing a bright light.

They then released a little ‘ping’ sound and flew off out of the room to begin exploring the temple.

Meanwhile, James focused on his spirit realm. Standing in an empty space was Jasmine, who was walking around waving her arms at the blank white space that was the ground of the spirit realm. With every wave of her arm, the shape of the room they were in began to take shape. Not only that, but refined spirit energies were used to create an accurate depiction of areas that had strange or high readings of spirit energy.

For example, apart from the doorway that leads to the hallway, which the little balls had buzzed out of, there was a door shape made from fire energy on a blank wall. This was thanks to the use of San’s Eye crystals in the little drones that allowed them to see spirit particles.

Not only could these little drones see spirit energy particles, but they could also map things out with a little ultrasonic sound wave. This was very similar to how a submarine would ping things in the water, instead it was refined to an absurd degree of accuracy and used by Jasmine to map out a 3D image of the world around the little drones.

Slowly, more and more of the temple was mapped out. They found a huge library filled with books and spirit jades. A room stockpiled with ancient spirit artefacts and weapons. A courtyard with an old cherry blossom tree and all sorts of other oddities.

After a few hours of this, Jasmine had eventually mapped out the entire temple, and her little drones had buzzed off into the huge expanse of the world outside the temple. Unfortunately, these things weren’t designed to be fast, and it would take them days to travel the hundreds of kilometres to reach the edges of this bizarre black cavern.

As James stood up to begin exploring, he noticed that the spirit energy of this temple was very thick. However, instead of primal spirit energy, the energy of the temple was almost entirely metal based free energy.

After a brief inspection using his scrying field limited to only a few meters, James discovered that the primal energy in the area was all being drawn toward the walls and very quickly was refined and released as metal free energy.

The only way this was possible was if the walls were made entirely from ore essence. That’s the only natural forming materials that could refine primal energy so quickly, and it was also the only material that could release such a thick amount of free energy into the atmosphere.

James’ breathing grew heavy and laboured at the thought of how much ore essence must have been used to construct such a huge temple. As he thought about this, he decided that he wasn’t going to follow the Emperor’s command to not take anything from the vault.

No matter what, he was going to be leaving this realm with his storage ring filled to the brim.

However, after remembering that there is supposed to be a guardian, James chose to hold back for the moment and he would ... appropriate some resources before he left. This in mind, James strolled out of the room he was in and began making his way towards the library room, which was conveniently rather close to the portal room.

As he walked in, he stared in awe at the towering shelves that spanned hundreds of metres all around him. Curiously, the library wasn’t empty. There were dozens of aged old scholarly types mulling around reading ancient scrolls and quietly muttering to each other.

The moment he noticed these people, they too noticed him. Instantly everything froze as the two parties eyed one another curiously. Before any misunderstandings could be made, an ancient old man in blue robes walked out from a row of shelves while distractedly muttering to himself and reading. Following this old man was an adorable little lizard about the size of a small dog.

Noticing the strange atmosphere, the old man glanced over and saw James. Then, as if suddenly struck by thunder, he seemed to jerk violently, and understanding washed the confusion from his eyes. “Ah! Oh! Errr ... You’re here already? I thought you weren’t meant to be here until next year.”

James was now rather confused. In his spirit realm, he was berating Jasmine for failing to inform him that there were people here. She just brushed it aside and said; “Well it would be natural for people to be here wouldn’t it?”

Meanwhile, out in the real world, James gave a salute to the ancient old man. “This Junior is James of the Dark Brotherhood. Greetings to senior.” For a rare change, James showed some respect to a senior cultivator. He didn’t bow, as was normal decorum, but he spoke formally, which was rare for him.

This was because the ancient old man in front of him was invisible to him cultivation wise. That meant one of two things. Either he was a scryer and could hide himself from other people, or his cultivation was so high that James’ attempts to read his power level were just brushed off like dust on the man’s sleeve. That could only mean that this man, whoever he was, had to be one of those ancient Core realm existences that the Emperor had told him about.

The old man just waved his hand and strode over towards James. “I am Gertrude Dragonheart, the lead researcher and I suppose ex-Emperor. I don’t know what that little brat has been doing to my Ancestors Empire out there, and I don’t care what he’s promised you. You go back out there and tell him that only people with the blood of the dragon can come into my temple!”

With that, the old man made a motion to grab at James. Suddenly, and to his great surprise, Gertrude’s hand was met with a huge force that even made him exert his full force to counteract it. As if trying to push his hand through an immovable substance, Gertrude’s hand froze only inches away from James.

James was frozen solid in place. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t move even a millimetre. Gertrude’s pressure had locked him in place, despite his ring deflecting most of it. This stalemate only lasted for a second or two until a ‘chink’ sound rang out, and the amulet on his neck cracked like an old plate.

At the same time, James’s spirit energy and spirit pressure both rushed into the ring, and his body suddenly blurred from its position creating a phantom image. A split second later, Gertrude’s body also vanished, and suddenly reappeared in the doorway to the library in the same instant as James.

This time, without the amulet creating a spirit pressure to hold him back, Gertrude’s hand reached out and grabbed onto James’ shoulder like a vice. James felt cold sweat pouring down his back, however, just as quickly as that vice like grip came, it was gone. Gertrude’s unnaturally powerful spirit pressure also dissipated and James felt free movement return.

Very confused with this situation, James glanced back and saw Gertrude and a few tower realm old men all investigating two items that had suddenly appeared on the table in the middle of the library. One of them was James’ ring, which, although cracked, was still operational. The other item was the 3 parts of the cracked amulet that James had been wearing.

James glanced at his hand and touched his neck. Realising he’d just been robbed, James felt indignation rising in his chest. Before he had the chance to escape and plan his revenge however, Gertrude distractedly reached out a hand towards James and grabbed at the air.

James then felt the old man’s spirit pressure solidify around him like a giant hand and grasp him. Moments later, he shot through the air and appeared suspended like a puppet next to the table.

To say James was a little confused and fearful of the direction this trip was heading would be an understatement. His face had long since assumed the blank empty expression he made when he was unsure of a situation, and his mind had fired up to its maximum as it began trying to plan his escape.

Gertrude looked at the amulet and then glanced over at James. “Boy, what is this artefact? To freeze me for an entire 3 seconds, it must be some kind of ancient life-saving device of a powerful sect. Tell me boy, who are you really?”

James made a gulp when he saw a strange, fanatical light appear in the man’s eyes. He then considered carefully and decided that in this situation, he probably wouldn’t get away with telling lies. “My guild created it! It’s design and manufacture is hardly a few months old.”

Gertrude blinked his eyes, and then his face became gloomy. “What nonsense! Tell me the truth boy, or I’ll just rip your soul out and absorb your memories!”

James’ eyebrow twitched at this old man’s refusal to believe him. After some thought, a grim smile appeared on his face. “I can prove it! If you have the resources available, I will make another one.”

Gertrude seemed surprised at this declaration. To be able to make such a powerful artefact at such a young age would be unbelievable for even the oldest of men still walking around on this continent. Gertrude himself had tried his hand at forging many times and knew it to be an intense and difficult process.

The youngest successful forge masters he’d ever met were rarely less than one or two hundred years old. Even the oldest and most practised foragemasters he’d met wouldn’t claim to be able to make such a device that could influence the spirit pressure of the heavens.

It goes without saying that the array patterns the Brotherhood had scrounged up which created spirit pressure weren’t rare, rather they were just forgotten and incredibly difficult to properly utilise. In this, the guild got incredibly lucky to have such a mastermind of engineering like Skay.

After a brief moment of consideration, Gertrude released his pressure and let James fall to the ground. Either way, whether the boy could manufacture another amulet didn’t matter. If he could, then the boy would be locked away here by him until everything he knew of forging had been rung out of him. If he couldn’t, they would just kill him.

Either way, Gertrude didn’t feel the boy could possibly be a threat to them, after all, the 16 residents of the temple were all ancient and had cultivation levels in the tower realm. He himself had a cultivation of Core Realm. This was actually a very closely guarded secret, and even Emperor Artimus was only aware that a few old people from past generations lived here to spend their lives studying ancient texts.

With a wave of the hand, an old man walked over and escorted James out of the library. Less than a minute later, as Gertrude was examining the amulet and ring, a loud ‘boom!’ echoed throughout the temple. Even this temple made of refined ore essence was forced to rumble and shake under the onslaught of this power.

Gertrude immediately had a horrifying premonition and raced out of the library towards the Gateway. When he reached the Gateway room, he glimpsed an extended hand giving him the finger, slowly disappearing into the rippling pond. Just as the hand disappeared, a strange cube was launched out from the other side of the gateway.

Gertrude immediately turned and ran with full speed from the room. After only a few steps he felt a huge pressure descend onto him. Even at the Core Realm of power, he found it difficult to escape the suction of the gravity bomb James had left behind as a gift.

The walls of the temple began to rumble and quake and slowly began to be sucked in towards the epicentre of the detonation. Seeing even the usually indestructible temple walls being warped by the magnitude of this implosion, Gertrude gave a loud roar, and his body shook as his spirit pressure and spirit energy circulated through his meridians, and he shot out of the portal room.

As he passed through the doorway of the room, the little lizard that had been following him around raced into the room. With an earth-shaking roar, the little dragon jumped directly towards the spirit bomb. It then forced open its mouth filled with razor shape teeth and swallowed the cube whole.

After a few more minutes of rolling around on the ground roaring and twitching, it finally calmed down. If James had seen this, he’d probably have spat blood from the shock of it. For any living creature to be able to survive in the pressure of the bomb at less than a meter from its point of detonation was defying everything he understood of this world. Not to even mention a creature being able to swallow a detonating gravity bomb and somehow survive.

What he wouldn’t be able to understand was that the detonation of the spirit bomb had created a huge suction that drew in immeasurable amounts of the free metal energy that permeated the temple. This created something like a pill that had incalculable amounts of metal energy all sucked into a single point.

For a baby iron dragon like the Guardian of the temple, this would be irresistible. Hell, even an adult iron dragon wouldn’t be able to stop themselves from trying to devour such a thing. Fortunately for the baby Iron Dragon, the bomb only had a short lifespan and had ended its implosive detonation before the dragon’s insides had been turned into mush.

Unfortunately for the dragon and the residents of the temple, the sheer amount of energy it now had surging through its body meant that it would have to go into hibernation in order to properly refine it all. It also meant that the temple would be unprotected for the next few years that the Iron Dragon slept.

Making things worse for Gertrude, was that the detonation had caused the red water of the pool to be sucked dry. It very slowly was starting to regenerate, but it meant that he would be trapped here for a while until the portal was ready again.

With a load roar of dissatisfaction, he turned and slammed a closed fist into a solid metal wall. A clang rang out, and the temple buzzed like a bell that was just struck. Gertrude’s eyes were shot with blood and filled with killing intent. With a dissatisfied grunt, he spun with a flick of the sleeves of his robe, and strode off into the dark halls of the temple.

-Yori Empire- Beneath the Capital -

James watched with a grim smile as the once full and excitably rippling pool suddenly began to shrink down to only a puddle at the very bottom. His brief visit to the Vault had only been a few hours, and he didn’t take away quite as much as he’d hoped to.

But he did manage to take away a great deal more than he expected. For starters, although his scrying couldn’t touch the walls of the temple, he could scry freely inside the room he was in. That meant that the moment he walked into the library, Jasmine had been busily scrying everything. Every book, Spirit Jade and parchment were recorded by her.

In the first few minutes they’d been in the room, Jasmine had already recorded everything. The problem was that a great deal of it was fragmented from the rapid speed she had been recording information. That meant that she would probably need months or even years to fully defragment and repair almost half of the recorded material.

Not just this, but he also had left behind all his little drones that were connected via Q-energy. This gave him the ability to continue exploring the world of the dragon vault and also allowed him to keep an eye on the temple, and its crotchety old residents.

James spun on his heel and walked out of the hall with a gloomy face as he began to arrange his own thoughts. ‘That old bastard! Just you wait, the moment this gateway is ready to open again, I’ll be waiting for you. Then I won’t just be visiting to see your library, I’ll be visiting to take all what you got!’

As James strolled up from the underground Gateway room, he was spotted by some guards. In a matter of minutes, Artimus had appeared to escort James out of the palace. As he caught up to James’ brisk pace, his face become complicated when he saw James’ gloomy expression.

“James, I see you’re back rather early. If it was because my father kicked you out, please allow me to apologise. I had no idea he would be so stingy. Normally if someone is visiting the vault, he and his guests all disappear somewhere else.”

James suddenly stopped in mid stride. His gloomy face then began to morph into the overly smiling face he’d had when he followed the Emperor down here. His smile crossed from ear to ear and his eyes formed into squinted slits as he looked directly at the Emperor. Seeing this smile again, like being eyed by a dangerous predator about to play with its food, Artimus had a sudden chill run up his spine.

“Old Arty, don’t worry about it. I got most of what I wanted anyway. However, some things happened, and your gateway seems to be broken for a while. When it’s regained its energy, why don’t you say hi to your old man for me.”

With that, James flicked his sleeve and strode off through the hallways and out of the palace. Artimus clenched his teeth and his face slowly developed into a scowl. ‘Damned old bastard! Do you have any idea what you’ve done! This boy is a monster parading in the skin of a man. If I don’t find some way to quell his ire, our Yori Empire is going to become a dust bowl!’

Artimus then began to take long steps back into the palace with a heavy frown marring his old face and a shadow hanging over him.

-Yansho City- Nexus -

James met up with his companions at the huge Mayan looking temple that sat at the base of the Palace Hill. This nexus was actually a focal point for more than 30 different Gateways all leading to other worlds. Some were only small and could only pass people through one at a time, while others were almost as big as the Gateway to the dragon vault.

As James and his comrades explored the temple, they all stopped when the discovered a rather new looking room with ‘Water World’ written across the top of it. They didn’t stop because of the name, but rather because of the short description next to it.

“Water world is a world with little to no spirit energy. Creatures of this world have no spirit energy, and the entire surface of the world is marred in huge craters and endless invisible fires. This is the newest addition to the Nexus and was a gateway only recently discovered near Gau City.”

Inside the room were a number of pedestals all showing strange artefacts that had been discovered by visitors to this realm. A toaster, a traffic light and even some literature.

James and Jessy were shocked at this discovery. This was clearly the Gateway to Earth. Not only that, but people had been visiting it. Upon further thought, James realised that the invisible fire was probably radiation from the nuclear holocaust. The reason it was called water world was probably because the ice caps had most likely melted by now and the entire planet would be covered by oceans, leaving only a few areas of dry land that would be covered in radiation and old crap that survived the war.

James decided that for now, he would avoid returning to earth. Firstly, he wasn’t sure how powerful he would need to be to avoid radiation sickness, and secondly there wasn’t too much left there that he wanted to explore. Nonetheless, thanks to Jessy’s endless pleading, James had Jasmine send in some drones to begin some exploration and perhaps find any survivors.

After completing the tour of the temple, everyone split up again and went to explore the city. Meanwhile, James started wandering around to all the clans and guilds in the city that focused on alchemy and forging. He wanted to gain as much knowledge on this as he could.

After a few visits where he gained hardly anything, James came to a tiny little alchemy guild. This guild was simply called Alchemy Guild 15, and had only 15 members. They were a group of old palace realm cultivators that had travelled the continent and devoted their lives to alchemy.

In the end, they eventually settled down in Yansho City because it was close to the Jetsu Mountain range, which was filled with an abundance of rare herbs and plants greatly desired for alchemy concoctions. When James appeared at the door of their little shop in the city and expressed an interest in learning alchemy, the youngest of the 15 flatly rejected him.

James stood at the counter with a wry smile and pondered on what he should do to earn their favour and get a chance to go over their notes. At the moment, James had little to no actual alchemy training or experience. In fact, apart from Norman, who remained locked away and forgotten in the depths of the Tech City lab, almost no one in the guild had experience with alchemy.

As such, James could only seek some help from other alchemists to try and gain some understanding. Now that he stood at the door to a tiny, little, forgotten shop in the capital and was still flatly rejected, James was forced to rack his brains.

He had long since thrown away the idea of simply paying someone to teach him. Firstly, because any alchemist worth his salt wasn’t about to teach some young nobody his trade just because he was rich and influential enough to have his own ‘free city’.

Secondly, if James wanted to learn the ins and outs of the trade, he didn’t want it to be from someone who was only interested in money.

Finally, James gave up on this guild as well. As he walked out of the shop, an old man dressed like a filthy beggar and smelling of shit strode in through the door. James was almost dry reaching just from passing by the man.

The man acting as the store clerk today also had a disgusted expression on his face as the beggar like man walked up to the counter while scratching his ass through the dirty hessian sack he was using as clothing. Curious to see just what this man expected to achieve, James stopped at the doorway. Then after second thought, he stepped out into the street and observed with his scrying. At least this way he didn’t have to smell the old bastard.

The beggar stopped at the counter and then reached up under his hessian clothes as if trying to scratch at his balls. Moments later he produced a sack filled with coppers and silvers which he unceremoniously dropped on the counter.

“This is the payment for the water lily base I asked you to prepare. Where is it?”

As the beggar spoke, he started scratching around in his dirty grey beard and pulled out a wriggling bug, which then very quickly disappeared into his mouth. As if struck by realisation, the man at the counter suddenly widened his eyes and then very quickly shot out from behind the counter and bowed to the beggar.

“Master Alchemist Sully. It was my grave mistake for not having recognised you be...”

Sully quickly interrupted this grovelling with a loud fart, that based on the smell and sound it made, James was certain was actually a shart, then flicked his hand through the air. “Shut up! Who cares?! Go and get my fucking potion base!”

With that, the man bowed again and ran off through a door leading downstairs. After the man had disappeared, James decided the show was over and went to start walking off. As he strode down the street, the beggar that had been busily scratching at his ass again, swivelled his head and stared after him.

James quickly forgot about the whole incident he’d witnessed in the alchemy shop and then continued onwards to try and find another place to start learning alchemy. As he wandered through the city, he would now and then smell the stench of shit nearby. Although he didn’t pay much attention to it, especially because this was a city with technology from the middle ages where they just shat in buckets and through it in the gutter, James couldn’t wave the feeling of being watched.

After the smell of shit had followed him to 4 other alchemy shops, James finally grew too suspicious to leave it alone. He released his scrying field to full radius and strength as he began searching for anything suspicious. Very soon, he noticed the old beggar man squatting near a gutter eating bugs out of a puddle of dirty old water.

At first, he ignored him, but after he visited a few more shops and noticed the man nearby pissing on something, eating something questionable, or being chased away by city guards, James finally gave up pretending not to notice him.

After turning into an alley, James stopped and turned around staring at the entrance of the alleyway. Moments later, the beggar disappeared from his scrying field of vision. Before James had the opportunity to investigate what was going on, he heard a sickly sounding cough behind him.

“Little boy. How would you like to become my apprentice?”

Moments after this sharp grating voice sounded, James smelt the odour of crap and spun back to see the old beggar standing behind him in the alley. Seeing the man standing there but not even giving off the slightest reading in his scrying field, James was stunned.

He then suddenly realised what had been making him feel so uncomfortable these past few hours when he felt the full force of the old man’s scrying field scanning him. Making James even more uncomfortable with the situation was that even with the combined efforts of Goldy, Jasmine and himself, the man’s scrying continued on, only being slightly inhibited.

A curious look passed over the man’s face when he’d scanned James from such a close distance. Firstly was the level of concentration and effort he’d had to use to scan James. This showed that James’ scrying field was almost as powerful as his own, which was a huge difference in power considering James was only True Spirit, and he himself was Tower Realm.

The second shock he received was from when he witnessed the ‘Hands of Time’ breathing technique operating inside James’ body. It boggled his mind to witness someone simply creating spirit energy randomly in their body and then having it just as easily disappear. Where was this boy’s dantian?

Finally, his mind almost collapsed in on itself when he realised that James was operating his breathing technique with 6 different types of energy! He almost wanted to kill James right on the spot to assuage his envy and hatred of the boy’s abnormal amount of good fortune.

‘The heavens are truly unjust!’ Sully grumbled in his mind. However, he then considered the potential of such a fortuitous youth. When he reaffirmed his decision to take this boy on as an apprentice, he looked up only to see that James had vanished.

Sully rapidly spread out his scrying field and began to hunt for James. Meanwhile, James was rapidly speeding away from that part of the city with absolute haste. He didn’t care if this dirty beggar was the fucking god of alchemy, he wasn’t about to get sucked into a strange relationship with the filthy man.

To his chagrin however, he’d only made it to the end of the street before a shadow fell from the roof of a nearby building. James was shocked when he witnessed the figure of Sully emerging from the blinding rays of the suns above him. He very quickly felt sick to his stomach when the unfortunate angle of the old man’s decent placed him in the perfect position for James to see everything hidden under his hessian sack clothes.