Chapter 79

Leksi was standing in front of a crate as we walked over, holding a small flat box in her hands. When we were finally close enough to see what was in the crate, we saw that there were many more boxes identical to the one she held, all of which were numbered. The one Leksi had in her hands was the one that was numbered 1-10, and when we looked at her in askance, she opened it up.

Our jaws dropped at was held within; protected by a fabric similar to velvet were ten neat rows of the eight-sided objects we had become quite familiar with. They weren’t any one color, and instead, each row went grey, blue, green, blue, orange, purple, purple, blue, green, orange. Reaching in and grabbing the box marked 11-20, I opened it up and saw the same layout, but the colors weren’t in the same order.

Looking a little closer at the skill gems that were in the box I was holding, I realised that each box contained ten sets of the corresponding skill or perk. The boxes seemed to be approximately 30 centimeters in both length and width, along with perhaps 7 or 8 centimeters in height. Assuming that each of the boxes had ten sets of ten skill gems a piece, that meant that there were upwards of ten thousand skill gems in this crate alone.

[Did you check these other crates?] I asked Leksi, since she was the one working in this part of the vault.

“You mean...?” she asked before the lightbulb went off in her head.

After picking up her tablet that had been sitting on the adjacent crate and passing it along to Leenah, she threw open the lid to reveal a similar sight. Rather than the entirety of the crate being taken up by boxes, however, it was instead divided up. On the left, there were three columns of boxes, and on the right, a pile of leather coin purse-like pouches. After grabbing one of them, she opened it up and dumped the contents into her hand.

[Huh, well that definitely explains something, ] Leenah said. [Is this why you had us hold off on purchasing any skill gems, Abi?]

[Part of it. I knew your family had been saving up skill gems for a long time, but I didn’t realize they had quite so many. You’ll need to go through them, of course, but you may need to purchase some while we’re here. There have been twenty-three new skill gem discoveries since this vault was last opened, so you won’t be finding them in there.]

“Hey, I just realised that this one is a perk, but only the legendary version is in the box,” Lucia said, drawing our attention back to the box that was numbered 1-10.

[Which one?] I asked.

“005, but I don’t know which one that is.”

[Enhanced Agility, ] Abi said.

[I guess it makes sense. If you wanted it to be quick and easy to find a skill or perk, then ten to a box is perfect, ] I said. [And why fill the boxes with lower tier perks if you have the highest tier perk available?]

“I think that’s what these pouches are for,” Leksi said. “This pouch has 058 on it, but the gems are different colors.”

[Back it up. Are we saying that there are at least ten nearly-complete sets of skill gems in these two crates?] Leenah asked.

[Aside from those twenty-three skills that were discovered after we left, yes, ] I replied.

“That’s assuming that all the boxes are full, too,” Leksi added.

[Of course.]

[I can’t imagine how much something like this would cost, ] Leenah said. [Our parents must have spent a fortune acquiring them.]

[Not just your parents, ] Abi said. [Some of those skill gems were undoubtedly brought over from the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, and your grandparents acquired a lot of them as well.]

[Still, they couldn’t have come cheap. What are we going to do with them?]

[It only makes sense to use them, ] I answered. [We’ll go through the boxes and separate a complete set for each of us, and then I’ll grab the skill gems we were looking for for Mason, Ben, and the twins. There will be some empty spots in the remaining sets, but we can work on replacing them.]

“You don’t want to give them a full set?” Leksi asked.

I shook my head. [They don’t need every skill or perk in existence, and they couldn’t make use of them all even if they did. Not like I can, and you three will be able to. If I was going to give a full set to anyone, it would probably be Zaszi and Kiri.]

“Do you want to separate them now or...”

[Nah, there’s no rush. Let’s figure out what is in the rest of these crates and then we’ll come back to them.]

Although there wasn’t anything that was an immediate attention grabber as the two crates that were full of skill gems, there were still some interesting things to see. While most of the chests and crates were made out of wood, there were four boxes that were made out of some kind of metal. Besides that, each of them had a screen on the lid and said lids were secured.

[Those are stasis boxes, ] Abi said as the four of us stood in front of them. [They’re typically used to store materials that would otherwise degrade or lose their effectiveness over time. You can find out what is inside and disengage the locks holding the lid down by using the touchscreen on top. I wouldn’t suggest doing the latter, though.]

“Why not?” Leksi asked.

[Boxes such as those are usually for the use of transporting rare or volatile materials, but they can also be used to hold those materials or even living specimens for a long time. Opening the boxes under the wrong conditions could easily damage or destroy what is within, and so only those who know what they’re doing should handle them. I would suggest using the touchscreen to figure out what is in them so you can add them to your inventory of the vault, but leave them alone, otherwise.]

[Duskwood saplings?] Leenah asked from where she was leaning on one of the boxes, looking down at the touchscreen.

[Ah, perfect example, ] Abi replied. [Duskwood trees will only grow in complete darkness, and even the briefest exposure to visible light will have a detrimental effect on them. If you opened up the lid on that box, then the light inside the vault would be enough to kill those saplings.]

[Aside from the fact that it can’t survive being in the light, what is so special about them to keep saplings in stasis?] I asked.

[Well, duskwood trees are only vulnerable to visible light when they’re alive. When they die and begin to dry out, they actively absorb darkness. Because of that fact, duskwood is highly-prized among those whose combat relies on stealth, as well as those who use dark magic.]

[Dark magic? Don’t you mean unholy?]

I could hear her scoff within my mind. [I know your mom hates it when humans call it that, but she hasn’t been able to get them to use the proper term. Unholy and holy magic doesn’t exist. It’s light and dark, respectively.]

[Oh. So duskwood is like magewood?]

[It doesn’t get stronger when you channel mana through it, but it does increase the potency of dark spells. Even more than magewood does, in fact.]

[I see. Is it just saplings in that box, Leenah?]

[Four in total, ] she replied with what could be only called a mental nod.

“No way! Leksi exclaimed as she took up a position similar to her sister. “There’s a Yvoel egg in this one!”

[Really?!] Leenah and Lucia asked as they moved over to place their hands on the box.

[It’s cool to the touch, ] Lucia said.

[Do you mind filling me in, here?] I asked. [What’s a yvoel?]

It was Leenah who didn’t so much as answer my question, but showed me. Retrieving her own tablet, tapped and swiped away at it before turning it around so I should see the screen. [That is a yvoel.]

The thought that immediately came to mind was that I was looking at a real-life Moltres, only it’s entire body was on fire, and not just its wings, tail and crown. Honestly, it was rather difficult to see where it’s body ended and the flames began, seeming like it was almost entirely fire.

[That’s another one that I wouldn’t recommend opening without taking time to prepare. Even in stasis, yvoel eggs must be kept at no less than 770 degrees celsius or the budding embryo will no longer be viable.]

[Hold on a sec. Those are five living things that have been in your dimensional storage for well over a thousand years. I thought anything living that was placed in dimensional storage would be killed instantly, so how are they still alive?]

“That’s a good point,” Leksi said.

[People have been trying to get past that limitation, even spending trillions of credits every year on research to do so. Even now, after thousands of years, there has only been one breakthrough, which resulted in the crates behind you. While they are capable of protecting life even inside of a dimensional storage, there are limitations, size being the biggest one.]

[The breakthrough was a new type of metal simply called kosmil. Kosmil is able to protect the contents of one of those boxes from being exposed to the radiation that permeates the pocket dimensions that dimensional storages are linked to... ]

[Like lead blocking radiation?] Leenah asked.

[Exactly, but lead isn’t effective enough in blocking radiation inside of a dimensional storage. The major limiting factor preventing the transport of anything larger than a few saplings--or a yvoel egg--is that kosmil is extremely difficult to work, especially as the size of a box is scaled up. If you look at each of those boxes, you’ll notice that aside from the lid, the rest of the box is made out of one single piece of kosmil. It’s made like that because kosmil is a non-weldable metal, and there are no other known materials that can block dimensional radiation. If there was even a single miniscule crack in a finished box, then the contents would be destroyed as soon as the box was placed in a dimensional storage.]

“How do they work with a lid then? Surely the radiation would be able to get through the gap between the lid and the box,” Leksi said.

[Extremely precise machining is how, often taking many days for each lid so it fits perfectly. Once placed and secured from the inside, nothing can get through, and the manufacturers of such boxes spend weeks making sure they’re working properly before they sell them. Of course, every box also has an extensive testing process accessible by their owners. That way, they can make sure that whatever is put inside won’t be destroyed almost instantaneously.]

[People really pay hundreds of millions of credits for boxes that protect living things from dimensional radiation?] I asked.

[Oh, absolutely, and people would pay billions if someone found out how to make them bigger. There are worries about that though, because dimensional storages can’t be searched unless you know exactly what is in them. If there was a box that could contain a person or an animal, then it would be all but impossible to find them.]

“What do you mean they’re not big enough to fit a person? I could fit into one of these,” Leksi said.

[You might think that, but there is substantially less room on the inside. That’s because the power source and all the mechanisms for the stasis field need to be held within the box, and they don’t take up a small amount of the total volume. That volume is reduced even further when something needs to be kept at a certain temperature, like the yvoel egg.]

[Why are they so expensive in the first place?] I asked.

[It goes back to kosmil being so hard to work, but it’s also rare. Like alii’lig trees, kosmil ore can only be found within a single dungeon, and only so much can be excavated per cycle of that dungeon. Add onto that the cost of labor and the demand for the boxes, and the price goes way, way up.]

The final two stasis boxes contained some living specimens that were just as interesting as the duskwood saplings and the yvoel egg, if not more so. The first one contained seven unnamed cat-like creatures, but the moment Leksi read out that they had come from Mezotis 3, we knew what they were. When we were exploring Yrranth in one of the Grasshoppers, we came across a family of cat-like animals with pitch black fur and a number of features. The most interesting of which was their long, seemingly prehensile tails that they used to catch fish. There was no danger in opening the box since the cubs or kittens were very young, but we weren’t prepared to take care of them.

Lastly, there was another egg, but this time whatever was inside was a complete mystery. There were no details on where it had come from or what was inside, and the only instructions were how to take care of it. It didn’t need to be kept above a ridiculously hot temperature like the yvoel egg did, but it did need to be kept somewhere slightly above room temperature. The egg was substantially bigger than the yvoel egg which had given me an idea, but I had seen enough eggs to know that it wasn’t a dragon egg. We debated opening the box so we could try to get whatever was in the egg to hatch, but decided to wait until we were back on Earth. Tamara was much more suited towards that sort of thing.

Having spent enough time on the four stasis boxes, we moved on to the rest of the crates and chests. While I was able to reach a decent ways up, Leenah and Lucia scampered up the shelving to get the boxes that were outside of my reach. Some they just dropped down to me depending what was inside, but most of the time they had to carefully bring them down. It was unfortunate that I couldn’t lift more with my telekinesis, otherwise it would have made things quite a bit easier.