Felix decided to start looking for treasure himself so, he hopped off the edge of the ledge and onto the second floor of the city. He slowed himself to a gentle landing in the back garden of a large estate that was enclosed by a large black, wrought iron fence along with hedges. Felix carefully stepped into the garden and into what appeared to be a hedge maze, which he did not feel like he had time for. Floating into the air above it, Felix looked down and saw quite a few Devoured hidden within the maze, entirely beasts.
In general their levels were a little under 150, much lower than the Devoured in the undercity. Felix wasn't sure where to look first, but quickly noticed that the Devoured seemed to be guarding every passage way to a single point in the maze that looked like a dead end at first. He noticed it initially because he was looking for the highest level Devoured, finding it traveling in a pair with another of the same level who both appeared to be guarding a dead end. As his eyes traced the paths outwards from there, the beasts were almost exclusively guarding the path leading to them.
[D] Devoured (Lvl 146)
[D] Devoured (Lvl 145)
The two Devoured both appeared to have been some kind of tiger. Even though they were both clearly affected by having been Devoured, they still showed hints of their predatory origin. They were still somewhat sly and graceful as they stalked back and forth through the maze with only the occasional hiccup and slight drunken wobble. Felix figured there had to be a vault of some sort that they were guarding, he just had to decide if it was worth trying to kill these stupid things. Ultimately, he decided he would because he hadn't been into any of the vaults yet, once he had he would have a better idea of what he could expect to find inside them.
Felix dropped himself into the maze just behind the two tigers and hit them both with consecutive triple sized Fire Balls. He went with Fire Balls instead of lightning because in this case, he could hit both of them at once. He could have fired multiple at once, but he figured they might interfere so instead, 5 tiny beads of fire fired out from the tip of his fingers each one a few seconds behind the last.
It only took a fraction of a second for each of them to hit to the ground between the two tigers, pressing them up against the wrought iron fencing beneath the hedges. As soon as they were about to peel themselves free, another exploded between them. After the fifth Fire Ball, Felix let the explosion subside to see if the tigers were still standing. Of course, being Devoured, they were stupidly resilient so Felix fired off two quadruple sized Lightning Bolts, one at each of them to ensure they stayed down.
Ding You have slain 2 [D] Devoured (Lvl 145 & 146)
The Fire Balls were effective, but they were also not a great call in a hedge maze. Even though the hedges were lively and filled with water, the fire was still hot enough to ignite them. The fire spread slowly at first, then very quickly spreading to the entirety of the maze in just a couple minutes. Felix turned around and looked towards the area of the maze the Devoured had been guarding and found a large fountain with a statue of a man.
The man stood at around 3 meters tall and looked like he was reaching his hands forwards to offer the water pouring from them. The water poured in to a large basin around him, the entire structure made of dark marble rather than the white stone the walls had been made of.
There was no doubt in Felix's mind that the vault was hidden somewhere in or around the statue so he began circling and inspecting it. The smoke was getting to be thick and annoying but Felix simply held his breath. His eyes were stinging slightly but it wasn't too bad just yet so he ignored it for now. He could probably create a spell to blow and keep the smoke away by modifying Gust to constantly keep the smoke at bay in every direction. That would have taken 20 to 30 minutes though just to design it and Felix was rather lazy.
Felix circled the statue a few times but couldn't seem to find anything, he didn't find a key hole, a lever, a button or even so much as an unnatural looking divot. He was starting to think he might have to just destroy the statue and hope the vault was underneath it, unfortunately he didn't have time to do so. The fire had almost burned away the entirety of the hedge at this point and was starting to die out along the edges. Unfortunately, that meant the entirety of the maze was visible through the gaps in the fence. Felix looked around him and saw the dozens of Devoured that had been stalking through the maze all looking directly at him.
Well shit.
Each of the Devoured around the maze were a different distance from the statue so as they ran through to get to Felix, they appeared one by one half a minute or so between each. Luckily none of them had any sort of ranged attack so they were stuck running into the choke point that was the corridor in front of the statue. Felix stood in front of the statue, an endless barrage of Fire Balls tossing the Devoured's bodies against the maze like ragdolls.
Ding You have slain 38 [D] Devoured (Lvl 132-142)
Felix was actually surprised to see the fence and stone ground blackened, but otherwise undamaged by his continuous stream of Fire Balls. He chalked it up to these being D grade materials and the ground back on Trenus still being in the E grade for the most part. Now Felix could inspect the statue undisturbed. Unfortunately, he had no idea what to do. He was very quickly getting to the point where he was tempted to start hitting it. The only thing preventing him from doing so was that he was pretty sure the vault, if it existed, was in a pocket universe tied to the statue, rather than in or under it.
He knew there was empty space under the statue, he had already seen the undercity. It was also possible there was an open cavity inside the statue which would mean hitting it was the right call, but the risk was too high. Unfortunately, it looked like there was some kind of key required to open the vault. Felix's only hope at this point was that the key was somewhere in the manor and not scattered somewhere throughout the city.
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He signed in resignation and flew up into the air, flying towards the manor's back door. It was possible the key was hidden somewhere in the backyard but Felix just kind of figured that was unlikely. The rest of the backyard, other than the maze, was almost entirely open consisting of flowers, vegetables and a neatly trimmed lawn. The most hidden areas were the bases of a half dozen or so trees scattered about but even those were entirely visible, from the right angles. Unless the key was buried somewhere, it was in the manor.
Felix opened up the large glass pane double doors and looked into what appeared to be a sitting room. There were couches and arm chairs laid around a lacquered wood coffee table. On each wall hung a painting, two of them portraits of humans and the other a landscape. The rest of the room was decorated meticulously with blankets, pillows, curtains and rugs that gave the room a rustic and cozy if not lavish vibe.
There were 7 doorways in the room including the one Felix had walked through. Looking through the doors ahead of him, Felix saw a large foyer and hall. To the left was what appeared to be a library, or just another sitting room. To the right, there was a dining room with all of the dishes set for a meal that had never arrived. Covering the plates and utensils was, instead of a meal, a thick layer of dust.
Felix walked forwards and looked around the room he was in, not finding anything of particular interest in there. Looking into the next room, to the right, he did spot a Devoured human that seemed to be dusting, though not very effectively as their hands were empty.
[D] Devoured (Lvl 101)
Felix didn't want to burn the house down by accident so he decided against Fire Balls. As soon as the Devoured turned to dust off a book shelf on the opposite wall, Felix stepped into the room and 5 separate arcs of electricity connected with the creature's body.
Ding You have slain a [D] Devoured (Lvl 101)
The creature's corpse slumped to the ground, a couple trickles of smoke pouring out of it. Felix wasn't sure what he would find in this room, other than books, but he was hoping for a secret chamber behind the bookshelf. He walked over to the far wall where the Devoured had been miming dusting the shelf and began pulling on all of the books. At first he was careful to put them back as they had been, but then he realized they had all already been scanned.
Felix began tearing all the books off the shelf, tossing them onto the floor until the entire shelf was empty. Unfortunately, it seemed like whoever had built this manor didn't know there was supposed to be a book to pull to open a secret room. Felix pulled up the carpet finding nothing underneath. He even moved all of the furniture but none of it was attached to anything. The desk had drawers but it was obvious there wasn't anything hidden within them, there wasn't any room left when Felix disassembled all of the drawers.
He thought about taking out his new axe and tearing through the furniture, just in case, but decided against doing so for now. If he couldn't find anything else of interest in the manor, he would come back and make sure the furniture was as innocent as it looked. Felix continued on through a couple of guest suites, a game room, a large bar, a dance hall, the dining room, kitchen, sitting area, theatre and almost a dozen bathrooms. Unfortunately he found nothing more than a couple dozen Devoured servants that were attempting to clean or maintain the place. Felix headed upstairs finding many bedrooms, bathrooms and a couple more sitting areas. The bedrooms were mostly empty, though there was a safe in the master bedroom but it hung open and was completely empty.
He was very impressed with the bed though. Like all the furniture in the building, it was high quality and clearly made of D grade materials, considering how resilient it was. While all of it was a little too luxurious for Felix's taste, it was high quality, higher than what he currently had at home. Felix was really glad he hadn't decided to destroy anything with his axe just yet. Instead, he ran through every single room in the house and looted everything that wasn't part of the structure of the building. He ended up with far more beds, couches and chairs than he would ever need, but it was also an effective way of removing clutter making it easier to spot anything out of place.
The first thing he noticed that was off was that in the main foyer, when someone walked in through the front doors they were greeted by 2 statues and 2 busts. They were located alongside multiple paintings right below the double curved imperial stairway. Felix stowed the busts in his inventory then one of the statues, but found he couldn't stow the other. He tried picking it up but it was fastened to the ground somehow.
Felix smiled as he poked, prodded and pulled on the statue until he finally figured out to spin the statue's head until it looked the other way. As soon as he did that, he heard a slight click coming from behind him on the wall. He turned around and saw a door had separated itself from the wall. It had been completely invisible before, like the doorway had magically appeared.
Felix was certain it wasn't an illusion, but given how well the door was hidden, it could have been. Looking inside, he saw that there was another staircase, perfectly aligned with the right wing of the imperial staircase above, that descended into the darkness. Felix cast a simple light spell and headed down the stairs finding himself in what appeared to be simply a really over the top wine cellar, vault, panic room and escape combo.
The corridor the staircase ended in was short with a handful of rooms in every direction, it was also really short in height. Felix's head was just a few fingers below the ceiling, though given that it needed to be hidden within the structure and couldn't be underground, he understood why. He looted all the bottles of wine, having no interest in them himself, he figured they may still have some value having aged for a few thousand years at least. There were also large wooden barrels containing some kind of alcohol that Felix also looted. Walking further into the corridor, he found what appeared to be a vault containing veritable piles of jewelry, coins, clothes, pottery, and trinkets Felix couldn't identify. There were a couple of weapons and a single suit of armor but it all appeared to be more ornamental than functional.
There were however, two exciting finds, one was a collection of 17 gemstones and a single large orb tossed into the pile. The gemstones were exciting, at least to Felix, because they could be turned into Mana Batteries. The orb on the other hand, was made of an opaque glass that shifted between purple and green and was a very familiar size. Felix looted everything in the vault then the furniture in the panic and escape rooms as well as a couple of hidden rapiers that appeared to actually be functional.
With the house completely cleaned out, at least without looking for any other hidden rooms, Felix ran back up the stairs and back out into the backyard. He flew over the maze, avoided the Devoured gardeners, and descended just in front of the fountain statue from earlier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .