"Why would he create horcruxes? Surely not to extend his lifespan since he should only be about sixty or seventy at the moment." The portrait said with a frown. "I can answer that question actually , his greatest fear is death. The idea that no matter how powerful he gets all it takes is a single mistake for all of his effort to be rendered void terrifies him. So he split his soul into at the moment six horcruxes that he hid away to try and be unkillable." Nick explained and the portrait sighed.-

"I can't exactly fault him for such a fear as it is perfectly natural but the way he accomplished it is simply dreadful. To use that old fool Herpo's flawed method to stave off death will only lead to madness." The portrait said with a look of disgust. "Wait a moment you said flawed method to describe the horcruxes which implies a perfect method existed." Nick pointed out with a very concerned look. How could he not be concerned when even horcruxes were a pain in the ass to deal with and they were highly flawed. A perfected version of that same sort of magic would definitely be way harder to destroy.-

"You've been sincere enough so I suppose I can tell you about that subject. You see after old Herpo lost his horcrux and had his power crippled he sought a way to recover and even perfect his creation in his madness and he succeeded. Unfortunately the perfect method required one to have a complete soul and his was fractured and missing a part which allowed us four to kill him and take his knowledge and treasures for ourselves. Rowena took a strange tree and a few books in ancient or unknown tongues."-

"I took the staff of Asclepius and his research on basilisks. That fool Godrick took the tomes of combat magic and magical swordsmanship. Helga on the other hand was more than happy to take all of his wealth instead. All of us agreed to destroy the perfected method he created however as it was beyond twisted and sacrilegious. Did you know that that mad man thought that binding ones entire soul to an item and existing as a mere projected body was a good idea? Dreadful stuff even by my standards and I am no saint as you probably know." the portrait said seriously.-

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Nick wracked his brain when he heard the name Asclepius as it sounded very familiar and then he figured it out and was shocked. Asclepius was the god of medicine according to Greek mythology and his staff was very likely to be a genuine divine artifact. Nick didn't find it strange that Salazar would have taken such an artifact since the staff was said the have a serpent permanently coiled around it and fit his affinity for the creatures perfectly. Looking around the room Nick frowned when he didn't see the staff anywhere amongst the treasures.-

The portrait scoffed when it saw this "Did you think I would leave a literal divine artifact behind when I was chased out of the castle? Everything here is merely that which I no longer had a use for but was too valuable to trade away. Don't look down on these things though they were nearly unheard of even in my time much less a thousand years later." the portrait said arrogantly. "You probably know where your likeness took the staff don't you?" Nick asked sternly. The portrait tutted at him however "Now why would I tell you that when you have no relation to me at all?" it asked mockingly.-

It was abundantly clear that the portrait throwing a parodied version of Nick's own words earlier back in his face. Nick realized that the portrait was merely stringing him along to try and get what it wanted this entire time and finally chose to ignore it and pack up the loot. The portrait wasn't lying about the rarity of this stuff either as Nick couldn't directly identify ninety percent of it when he was storing it away. The ten percent he did recognize were various valuable metals such as star metal , night iron and even what looked like liquid gold in a bottle but was a stupidly rare metal known as gods blood.-

The reason for the name was that according to myth when a god was wounded they bled golden blood. God's blood however was very much a metal however that had nothing to do with gods at all but rather was the result of a freak magical incident with as little as a .00000000000000001% chance of happening. The stuff was the best metal for enchanting bar none and was so valuable and rare that most people didn't even know it existed.