As the two dragons stood still on the teleportation array, it took more than a few seconds for the other to finally react to Akevorax’s statement. Forgetting the request itself, this dragon lacked any rights to even enter that vault, let alone guide Akevorax to it!
“This isn’t a matter I can handle, Akevorax. A supreme tier will arrive shortly,” they spoke unsurely and teleported away to their cave a moment later.
And in their place, he was left standing for almost half a minute before a new dragon finally teleported in front of him. Unlike the previous one, who hardly interested Akevorax, this one’s golden scales with claws of dirty gold fire drew heaps of curiosity. However, they clicked their tongue as soon as they appeared, saying, “Even if you were promised six grade 0 items, that was on the condition that you didn’t receive the dragonstone. What are you still doing here?”
“But everyone saw that I didn’t receive the dragonstone back then… Is the clan going back on their word?” Akevorax’s smile deepened as though he took joy in the upcoming conversation.
Either two things happened in his opinion. And he dearly hoped it was the better one.
The result which ended with him six items richer.
“That’s not how it works–” the dragon’s voice quietened, and they looked down on Akevorax with a frown. They thought back to the exact proceedings of that day and decided to just take the easy way out, one which skipped all the meetings with elders and particular discussions. “Fine, you can take two items.”
“Four items, and one of them has to be a teleportation artifact.”
“Two items from the vault. Non-negotiable,” the dragon stood his ground. What was the little mithril tier going to do? Annoy him with impossible requests?
“Four! What makes you think I’d willingly take less than what I rightfully deserve?”
“Two.”
“Four!”
Needless to say, this back and forth continued for about a minute. At this point, the confrontation of the two, thankfully silenced by the supreme tier, drew enough attention that someone of significantly higher standing finally came by.
“What is going on here? Why are you arguing with a young dragon, Shekrithma? And what fuss are you raising again?” The one who came down was none other than an elder with fluorescent green claws, Dreisetno, whose expectations of his antics were sky-high.
However, even facing this elder, he didn’t drop the shameless act, stating aloud, “I believe I’m owed six grade 0 items for the dragonstone I gave up.”
“Is that all this is about?” Dreisetno turned to face the supreme tier, who now squinted somewhat at the development, having fully expected the elders to immediately cut down that absurd request. But instead, the elder gave the following order, “Don’t stand there! Take him in! Wasting my time like this…”
The matter ended as he teleported away immediately after, leaving a stunned pair of dragons over the conclusion. Neither side honestly expected Dreisetno to argue in favour of Akevorax, and yet it just happened.
And now the golden scale dragon, Shekrithma, had no retreat as the teleportation array transformed to the vault’s destination and granted him free access.
Six grade 0 items… While the clan absolutely had hundreds of such things, it shouldn’t really be hard to understand that if he picked the more valuable items, it meant giving away up to a few percent of the entire clan’s wealth to a single dragon!
Thankfully, the six items that Akevorax chose weren’t ridiculously valuable, with several good reasons.
Obviously, those incredible items all possessed specific limitations on their uses, or came as equipment he really couldn’t use without the crystal body created at master tier. Let alone their mana costs which exceeded the chambers filled with condensed mana he stored by tens of times over. He may as well be a speck of dust when compared to supreme tiers in this regard. As for the biggest reason for picking less valuable things…
He just needed them more. Either pick an item he held on to for 20 years before it might be used, or something which helped him right now to grow immensely?
One of the items was a high-rank treasure tool for teleportation gates. This saved him a massive headache in the future as Akevorax just had to teleport over to a new sub-realm, set up an array, and link it to this tool for an easy, reusable way to get back and forth. However, if the effect only amounted to that much, he might as just create all the arrays himself.
This tool not only allowed almost 1000 links to it, but then acted as a controller for any further arrays linked to deployed ones. In this way, he could create a massive network of teleporters across dozens of sub-realms!
While merely created by cornem tiers, this thing’s strategic value alone placed it in the grade 0 vault.
The next item was an astonishingly rare potion which provided a universal speed boost to all Mind palace constructions, the exact sort of thing Akevorax needed to build that array faster. Whilst mostly the potion acted as a temporary stimulant, part of its effects retained permanently, so he’d be just 10-20% faster after it wore off.
Two materials which he deemed useful for Mala and Jaren, respectively.
An unknown crown that even the dragons failed to trace a legacy back to. Its effects weren’t too well known, but Akevorax saw that it clearly resonated with his Origin Force. Furthermore, the supreme tiers who briefly analysed this item in the past figured out that it invoked some sort of protective power, and these notes allowed him to take it easily.
Lastly, he acquired something through an almost illogical method…
As he wandered through the rows and rows of stacked items, ignoring the piles of precious minerals and gemstones littered about the place, a stack of them happened to tremble as he walked past. Something considered close to impossible by many as the vault purposely sealed everything within. Whilst Shekrimta tried to pull him back, something about the trembling pile of gems drew immense interest, and even with Elder eyes active, he failed to see anything of impressive nature. No one intervened as his condensed psychic force gently knocked over some gemstones and let them rattle against the floor…
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
What he found was… Sorry, that was wrong.
What found him was an uncut gemstone filled with endless greyness. So much so that it appeared black, but also contained a faint whiteness which distinguished it from pure darkness or void. Something sat with the crystal, and the moment it escaped the pile, it flew out of the pile and stabbed into his neck.
While blunted, the gemstone easily penetrated his scales and entered his body. All of this taking a millisecond at the most and he was completely unprepared for what just happened. Akevorax tried to investigate where it went, but found the stone entirely vanished, even to his enhanced Elder eyes, not a single thing appeared.
Worse than that, the dragon adjacent had prepared to stop whatever was in that pile, but found their own psychic force completely failed to intercept the unknown crystal!
He was Shekrimta, a supreme tier dragon with a Supreme Mind palace, who now regretted not stopping the young dragon. Defeated wholly, he spoke up, “Are you still alright? I will have to treat that as your sixth item, there are rules… But feel free to take some more gemstones or a few ingots of whatever you’d like.” Whilst bending the rules slightly, he argued it a fair assertion since this situation barely happened once every century and didn’t want to deal with Dreisetno once more.
Akevorax just stuffed crystals and gemstones of a few major elements into his dimensional storage, then took a few ingots of cornem tier metals. Whilst supreme tier metals were objectively better, he couldn’t even melt them, let alone utilise an array with them.
Of course, whilst a strange crystal forced its way into his body without any indication, Akevorax hardly thought ill of the situation…
Only because he knew so little of the grade 0 vault’s protection mechanisms. If he’d seen the arrays in advance, his attitude wouldn’t have been so calm. Then again, the fact only doubled down on that item’s uniqueness. It was no surprise the clan never figured out its true power as it likely retained a sealed state to all who failed to meet its requirements.
Who’d be upset about being forced to take something insanely valuable suited specially for them?
And just like that, he cheated the clan of six grade 0 items by abusing a technicality. Although it felt more like a complete and utter bluff.
Dreisetno being on his side, for some reason, probably helped most though. The two dragons teleported back to the central mountain right after and separated immediately, one to make a report which left all four elders chuckling, and the other to go see his friends and begin training.
When back at the cave Jaren already took a shot at the situation, “That was quick, you got rejected I assume?”
But in response, he just threw over a strange plank of wood about a metre long and engraved with figures of archers firing at… natural phenomena?
One of them fired at a bolt of lightning, another at a raging bonfire, and a third at something akin to the ocean. If not for the unprecedented mana and great runes within this plank, Jaren might have rolled his eyes, but for some reason just stood rigidly as the engravings became his only focus.
“Wow… Forced Exposure really is too easy. At least he’ll shut up for a few days,” Akevorax’s mutterings earned a few weak laughs with Mala the only sincere one. She recognised the piece of wood on sight, but that smile faded immediately as she too received an item.
A bottle with pearlescent blood which constantly reflected a rainbow of colours amongst the delusion of milky white. She didn’t recognise the fluid on sight, but Akevorax’s single word triggered an intense euphoria, “Supreme tier unicorn.” She rushed away quickly to begin both experiments and usage of the blood, which left just two. Unfortunately, he could only say, “I have these elemental crystals if you’d like them… But there wasn’t anything all that suitable for you two.”
Neither of the two appeared that bothered though, mostly expecting such a result given their pathways. And Raccelline already knew that none of these materials aided her growth in the slightest, just time training with dragons and access to techniques.
And on that note, the group’s training began in full force.
The four adults finally received word back from Casstilandri about their tail problem, but Akevorax missed the conversation as he spent that time clearing snow and rock from his Mind palace in preparation for the large scale array he’d be creating.
And after that he just sort of forgot about it as he moved on to learning a new word in Draconis.
On this day, about a week since he returned from the Evelard range, Akevorax sat in a muffled bubble and spoke to himself often about the state of the next word he planned to learn. This one meant ‘water’, plain and simple, but of all the elements thus far it gave him so much trouble that he gave up to choose the more complex ‘life’. Almost ironic in nature, but ever since the fight with Lostradus, he happened to understand enough about certain dimensions that their true nature melded with the learning process.
Maybe it was best to say that unless one saw through to the extra dimensions of the universe they could never grasp what exactly a great rune intended to do.
Two days whilst fumbling around with the word for water ended any attempts to learn then and there, but this opened up a new problem. The phoenix flames already allowed him to directly feel the nature of life as an element, which meant half his thoughts were already perfect.
The other half, not so much.
For the hundredth time, Akevorax repeated in the muffled zone, “Life is golden. Gold is not a dimension, it is an intersection; a boundary. But boundaries are inherently unstable, too much pressure on one side and it collapses… Unless all the maths is wrong. But all of this is agreed on…” His voice faded out before a new idea finally came to mind. Asking, “Nexus, is it possible to buy any notes on dimensional intersections?”
[Yes, but not the information you’re searching for]
“But I already understand the word!”
[All higher concepts work similarly to your manifested will, they can easily be tainted by the ideas of others. We internally bar ourselves from becoming a source of taint, even if you cut us off from the universe somehow]
A reasonable point, but Akevorax couldn’t help clicking his tongue in response. All of this nonsense came from the nature of great runes themselves, which the Nexus also refused to explain because that too was a higher concept. Without the necessary information or ability to personally conclude what ‘gold’ meant in regards to dimensions, he was unable to transform that word in Draconis into a spell.
[Whilst not ideal, you only need a few more evolutions to reach master tier and activate the divinity]
“Forget about it, I’m just going to focus on my soul,” he made a decision but the lack of a solid conclusion still bugged him.
Gold came from a result of elements sat on the boundary of dimensions… Or was it better to call those gaps? Either way, it was like a permanent tight-rope artist, and the reality of this frustrated him more than anything.
Origin Force delineating elements into a golden colour made sense, the transparent element forcibly pulled them from a pre-set dimension and onto the boundary where they gained a colour change.
And if it wasn’t clear because Akevorax spoke in riddles about it all too much…
The colours of magic weren’t real; the dimensions were though. He, and many others, struggled to understand the fact because visual feedback both agreed and disagreed with this at the same time. It was only after the second viewing of these dimensions that he cleared up several misconceptions and realised that the colours he saw were dregs of a higher concept.
All magic featured some unknown higher dimensions, whether that be an intrinsic or extrinsic property, and in the case of elements, it granted the special colourations which formed special sets. Technically, this all occurred as the higher dimensions projected a portion of themselves onto reality. He also tried to reproduce this result mathematically, but as the description got deeper, the complications multiplied. However, just the tidbits he understood certainly explained quite a few magical nuances.