I considered changing clothing but decided against it. One of the rules here, like most vampire cities, was no flying, but there were numerous people running about for deliveries. They used a controlled pace, but most of them also had their physical stats limited to 1,000. It might draw extra attention to myself, but how many of them would see more than a blur if I used my full speed…
An unbecoming grin stretched across my noble face. I’d just entered the city for the second time, and, once again, everyone’s eyes hit the ground. Within a few seconds I was already out of sight and heading straight toward the middle of the city.
After a few minutes, I’d already made it as close to Lord Soroush’s manor as I had the first time. I was only approaching from a different angle. I didn’t bother trying to hide my sudden appearance, but finally slowed down in the middle of the street amongst the crowd. As I thought, besides those right next to me that were startled, everyone quickly looked away when they noticed my garb and the rich red of my eyes.
Like an honored guest, I strolled up to the castle that held the vault I’d come to plunder. There was a steady flow of traffic heading into the manor, so I just followed. Most of the people around me had at a minimum one red sleeve, if not two. Only a few were dressed differently and all of them were Truebloods. Thanks to their own self-importance, they were just as inclined to not look at me as the low-bloods. Fantastic.
“I’ll do my best to inform you where the guards and Lord Soroush are while you head to the vault,” Shamash said through mind-speak. He was still at our basecamp and was using his crazily powerful perception to track what was going on in the manor from more than a mile away. For all my misgivings, the benefits of having a lich around couldn’t be numbered. “The only ones I’ll be able to track are the high level captains and Lord Soroush. The rest I leave in your hands. Even though it’s possible for you to leave this place without causing a stir, it’s more likely that your theft will be found out before you leave the building. Be ready to flee and keep the Immaculate Light Magic Focal Crystal close.”
Shamash the magic realm surveillance hacker…
As I stepped inside, I found that there was a long hall to either side and giant doors directly in front of me that opened into an audience chamber with a large crowd already gathered there bickering.
“This is where the city’s nobles get together to squabble,” the lich said. “Lord Soroush isn’t here but joins them often. Currently, he’s on the fifth floor, which is the highest level. The vault is the third floor. There should be a flight shaft further down either hall.”
I couldn’t help but respond. “Did you say the vault is the third floor? As in the entire floor?”
“Yes.”
“Besides the painting, how am I going to carry so much? Should I just look for the best items…” He’d spoken as if I’d be able to loot the entire thing in the past. I expected it to be of a decent size, but how could I carry around the entire contents of a single castle floor?
“That’s not necessary. You’re underestimating what a Master Ring is capable of. You’ll see soon enough.”
I resigned myself to waiting for an explanation until I arrived at the vault. I headed down the hall to my right, which was of exquisite design that was on the same level of any of Hallow’s upper echelon’s mansions. Black marble tile was polished to a glossy shine. The walls were painted blood-red, while white columns segmented the hall into smaller sections. Paintings as tall as a man were centered in each section to the right and left. I didn’t care to learn who they were, but beneath each portrait was a table with varying flowers, plants, and trinkets that all made up little shrines.
I hadn’t quite made it to the end of the hall when I reached the flight shaft. There was a stairwell hugging the wall, which I began to scale instead of transforming to fly upward. So far, not a single person had paid me a bit of attention. This place reminded me more of a government building than a place of residence. My guess was that was because Lord Soroush practically ran the city and didn’t just dwell here.
As I headed up the stairwell, there was still a decent flow of traffic that was going to the second floor. From there, only a couple people dared to climb or fly up any higher. I reached the top of one staircase and turned the corner to climb the final stretch where I saw the entrance to the third floor. There wasn’t one. There was nothing but blood-red stone…
“Use Mana Sight to examine it,” Shamash insisted.
I did as he said and saw something unexpected. The wall of the flight shaft was glowing with dense Dark Mana overlapped by Fire Mana. But at the top of the stairs where the entrance to the third floor should have been was only a thin veil of Fire Mana as if the Dark Mana part of the wall had disappeared.
“As I suspected,” the lich said. “It’s an illusion cast by a Fire Mage. The wall doesn’t really exist. Once at the top of the stairs, turn the corner but immediately use every Invisibility ability you have and stay to the side of the main walkway. Do not pass through the illusion or even touch it. If you do, the Fire Mage will be able to feel the fluctuation. There’s a way to bypass it, but do as I tell you first then I’ll explain.”
The moment I made it to the top of the stairs, I turned the corner quickly while making sure I was out of sight, then cast Invisibility, Shadow Step, and used the Wind Mirror Pastor Whitfield had given me all at once. Then I slowly stepped back until my back was against the wall.
“Good,” the lich continued. “Now listen carefully…”
He explained that any Alignment besides Fire would disturb the Fire Mage’s illusion. If I used a Fire-based Form, then I could get around it. It wasn’t much more difficult than that. As long as I passed through the illusion with a dense enough fire aura, I could completely bypass it. The trick was doing it without using too powerful of a fire aura because doing so would alert everyone in the area. First of all, the illusionist would know a fire aura could bypass their illusion so it would immediately alert them. Secondly, it was uncommon for a Vampire to have a powerful fire aura. If such an aura suddenly appeared inside the manor then it would alert anyone paying attention and every guard would come to investigate.
There was one other problem. My clothing. I waited for someone to fly past to a higher floor before beginning to remove my suit. Skeletal Armor covered me in its place. Even though my Skeletal Armor could restrict my aura as well, because of its nature and it being a skill that I cast through Blue Magic, I could use it as proper armor and push my aura into it.
I stopped moving as I heard footsteps turning the corner below me that were heading up to my current level. The only clothing I hadn’t packed away were my pants, which I had one foot out of and one foot in, and my underwear.
A female vampire who wore a tight-fitting black dress was taking her time with each stair as she approach. When she took the final step up, we were suddenly less than ten feet away from one another and I was in nothing but a pair of plain black boxer briefs.
She had the perfected features that vampirism brought and was very much an attractive creature. That only added to my embarrassment.
As she turned the corner to head to the next level, we were no more than three feet from each other. Even then, she didn’t even glance in my direction.
I turned away as she headed up the stairs. Even then I felt like I was using the power of Invisibility for the ultimate evil.
When she finally made it to the next level and turned the corner, I swiftly changed out of my clothes and made sure the Skeletal Armor covered me from head to toe. Then, beneath my armor, Crimson Incubus started to take form.
Matching the aura of my armor with the illusionary barrier wasn’t difficult, but I’d have to do it as soon as I dropped Invisibility. Then, once through the barrier, I’d need to cast Invisibility again as quickly as possible. I could see through the illusionary wall well enough with Mana Sight to know that no one was directly behind it, but the Fire Mage had to be close. I’d try to go in stealthily, but
if that failed, I’d also have to be ready to fight. Shamash was able to confirm for me that there wasn’t any high level guard on the third floor. The Fire Mage was probably level 30,000 at most.
I waited for someone else on the stairwell to pass by then checked if anyone was coming as best as I could. Stepping out of Invisibility, I matched my aura to the illusion and spent a few seconds tweaking it before stepping through the wall. There was no resistance.
I made a conscious effort to make sure I pulled my entire body through before casting Invisibility again. I’d already looked both ways and my eyes had settled on a vampire at the end of the hall who was pacing back and forth while talking out loud to himself. It took me a minute to realize he was arguing with someone through mind-speak. It seemed that his employer didn’t mind that he was spending his time at work on the Underworld’s version of cellphones… I would have rewarded him if I could. It was just too perfect.
Slowly heading away from the guard toward the middle of the building so that Invisibility would stay in full effect, I soon found exactly what I was looking for. I came upon the only opening on the entire floor, besides the stairwells, to find a round dark-steel vault that was more than ten feet tall with a curled up serpent-beast rising off of it. The most eye-catching feature of the image was that the beast had one eye closed and the other eye open.
The next thing I noticed was that the vault didn’t have any handle at all, let alone a keyhole…
“Very good,” Shamash’s voice sounded. I mentioned the missing keyhole and his answer left me reeling. “For a vault associated with a Master Key, there is no physical entry. Walk up to the vault and place your hand on it, then will yourself inside. You’ll see.”
I continued forward with Invisibility still active. Once in front of the vault, I placed my hand to the side of the serpent-beast, closed my eyes, and sent a pulse of mana through my hand into it. Nothing happened, or so I thought until I opened my eyes.
The vault door no longer stood in front of me and instead I’d appeared in an open room that spanned hundreds of feet in all directions. From what I could tell, its width, height, and depth were equal to the third level of the manor. Unlike the first and second floors, instead of it being filled with people and offices, it was filled with—everything you could imagine. To my immediate left were rows of furniture. Not cheap furniture, but ancient beds and couches, tables and chairs, that the Shah family would pine after. It was the stuff of vampire royalty.
What I saw to my immediate right made me almost drop to my knees in excitement. Bookshelves as far as the eye could see filled with books, scrolls, and mana tablets. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it for a long time. Soon I found myself walking down an aisle without even knowing it.
“Welcome to the secret library of a great family,” Shamash said with as much reverence as I felt. “This is only a lesser one from Lord Darius’s family, but it still contains more than a thousand years’ of history and magic theory. It is here that your real search for information on Cataclysm will begin.”
I dared to run my fingers over the cover of a green scale wrapped book. I could feel powerful mana radiating from it.
As I was about to ask, Shamash answered a question that had started stirring in my mind. “Take your time and take in all that is here. This is one of the safest places in all of the Underworld right now because only a few have a Master Ring that can open it. Do you notice the hum in the air?”
Peeling my eyes from the rows of possibility, I turned my attention to the room’s atmosphere. He was right. There was a hum, or a subtle vibration, that seemed to permeate everything. I told him that I did.
“That is spatial static that is present in all artificial worlds,” the lich said, grasping my full attention like an iron vice. “This current world is overlapped on top of the real one. The manor was literally designed around this vault’s artificial world. That’s why it’s so secure. Even if someone forcefully broke into the vault’s door, they wouldn’t be able to enter here. If someone stepped into the space where this vault overlaps with the real world, they would see a phantom image of everything here, but they wouldn’t be able to access any of it.”
“Incredible,” was all that I could manage to say. “How do I even start to choose what to take with me?”
The lich sighed in annoyance. “I’ve already said that it’s not necessary to choose. With the Master Ring on your finger, you can carry this artificial world with you. You can even access it just like your personal inventory. The two main differences are that it can hold exponentially more than your natural inventory, and you won’t suffer any of the weight of what it contains. In other words, it is an artificial inventory that far exceeds what is normally possible.”
I was holding on to a bookshelf to secure my balance. I can take it with me? All of it?
Turning around, I headed to the end of the aisle. My speed increased until I was running, and I came to a stop in the middle of the gigantic room. Spinning in place, I began processing what was there. My mind seemed to malfunction momentarily. On the other side of the section of furniture, the corner of the room was lined with paintings and artwork that were hung and leaning against the wall. The smaller pieces were hung in three and even four rows. There had to at least be two hundred feet of wall dedicated to nothing else. Next was a section of small trinkets, or artifacts, followed by a larger section of containers of blood. They lined the wall and stretched as far back as I could see. Just after that was a literal armory that eventually turned into a clothing department of sorts. The armor and weapons were carefully hung and stacked up to the ceiling on dark-steel partitions. Combined, it was the largest section in the entire space. In the back corner, opposite the section of blood, was where the monetary type items were kept. What gave it away was the dumpster-sized containers that were overflowing with Dark Orbs.
After I’d spun around half a dozen times I plopped down to the ground and sat there. Shamash had even more to inform me of. “It’s actually faster to search for specific items when you’re outside and have commanded the Master Ring to assimilate this space and contain it. In doing so, not only will this world cease to overlap with the real one and become something you can take with you, but you can scan it with your mind just like your inventory. Removing and depositing items is just as easy.”
“So I don’t even have to look for anything now, I can simply leave this space, assimilate it, then walk away with everything in my possession?” I replied.
“Yes.”
I fell back and just lay there looking up at the ceiling. It was like inheriting a department store filled with priceless antiques and only having a few hints of what treasures were hidden there. It could take weeks to look through everything. No. To look through everything including the books and mana tablets, it would take years. It had the potential to turn Sanctuary from a sanctum of struggling newbies to a flourishing power that could eventually defend itself. I hadn’t even looked at the gear and weapons yet, but, with help from my purchases in Hallow, we might be able to rival a small vampire family in gear alone. Shamash had said that such items wouldn’t interest the Head Mistress, but that didn’t mean they were of little worth. To us, it was a precious mine filled with countless gemstones and fine metals.
Unable to help myself, I took a quick stroll around the room and found all kinds of specialty items. Mirrors and jewelry boxes were in the furniture section, including treasure chests that were filled with fine dishware and utensils. There was personal correspondence on desks and in bins near the paintings, alchemy potions in what I’d thought was just the blood section, jewelry with the clothing, and numerous different coins and currency that looked to come from different nations in the back corner. Some of it was obviously not even vampire in origin.
I’ve always wanted to start a coin collection…
“That’s enough for now,” Shamash finally said, pulling me from my dreamy exploration. “It’s time to go. You’ll have plenty of time to look thr
ough everything as much as you desire in the future.”
Rising from the floor, I took in a deep breath as if smelling an intoxicating aroma, then started heading for the exit.
Shamash directed me to place my hand on the vault and, before exiting, I sent a pulse of mana into it. Immediately the vault became transparent to allow me to see what was beyond it. No one was there. He also confirmed that there were no high level vampires close by.
With a thought, I appeared outside the vault’s door. Then he directed me in how to assimilate the vault space but left me with a warning. “Once you’ve assimilated, the vault will disappear, and it takes a few minutes to reassimilate it with the world’s space. Therefore, you can’t use it to quickly escape and defend. Once it’s contained within your Master Ring, it’s just like your inventory. Nothing alive can enter except for summons and the soulless undead. Escaping is the only option.”
On the other hand, assimilating and containing the vault world into the ring would take but a moment, so if I started the process, at least I wouldn’t have to wait for a few minutes if someone showed up.
So far everything had gone as well as I could hope, but there was still something that worried me. Even vampire arrogance couldn’t explain why they didn’t have more guards. It just felt too easy. Especially now that I knew it took almost no effort to walk in with a Master Ring and take possession of everything here… Perhaps I was overthinking it. Shamash’s perceptions were guiding me after all. I had to admit that it was only this easy because of his help. I’d have to stick with that as the explanation for now and just be ready for anything.
Underworld - Scorching Sun: A LitRPG Series Page 36