I stood before one thousand resurrected people. After finishing the first batch, I noticed I had way more Cores than I thought. That allowed me to bring even more people with high HP pools back. Meanwhile, Rhenius crossed the ice with the Duke to make the surviving soldiers surrender. I had a budding headache from burning over a hundred million Energy. But this many people was a godsend as far as the {Wellspring} was concerned. In the few hours since we returned with the Duke, I recovered my full Energy pool and was back to eroding the random disability curse.
After Rhenius returned with the officers representing the rest of Acacius' expedition, I made my speech. Rhenius was on my left side, Duke Cadrel, and then Callisto. On my left the table with the two cloth golems.
"All of you pledged your new lives to me. Now let me tell you what is going to happen. You are going back home then we are going to put prince Rhenius here on the throne. You will serve Rhenius in whatever capacity you are talented with. The first task is to make sure we have working ships to bring everyone back to the mainland. I make this a Quest for you."
I paid the Exp cost and relished the amazing faces they did.
"You can make quests?" Rhenius whispered as he asked me.
I winked, "{Grandmaster Royal Order}. Work hard, prince. You gotta grind those Skill levels."
The ressurrectees went over the ships like a swarm of army ants. Marlowe and Sumsar went underwater to hunt monsters. I needed more low-level Cores. I also needed to butcher the thousands of creatures in my item box. The contracted mages took ten percent of my Exp but anything they killed was considered my kill.
On my side, I sent a messenger bird to let Queen Eathelin know what I was up to. I also collected all the other ships and bodies, including the fused barge.
By the time the sun rose in the east, we had everything ready to depart, except for the lack of provisions and the ice. I issued another mass Quest for the sailors, to bring the fleet back to dry land. With everything ready, we set sail.
It was uneventful. I filled my Energy pool and reactivated {Erode Curse}. It was sitting at a glorious 3.6%. I shoved it aside as a problem my future incarnation would have to deal with. My resource regeneration wasn't going to improve anytime soon as I was living on borrowed time.
With everything in place, I got out of my cabin and looked for the [Prince]. I found him at the captain's quarters of the flagship. The room that belonged to his dead brother. As I approached, a knight standing guard next to the door knocked on it.
"Sire, Her Highness Arista is here."
"Let her in," came Rhenius' voice from inside. As I entered, he was reading some documents. "Please, sit. What can I do for you?"
I got comfortable on an armchair next to his desk. I saw a nautical map of the "Scorched Continent" coastline on the desk and took it, committing it to memory through my [Cartographer] profession.
"That secret vault your father keeps my family's mementos. Where is it?" I asked seriously.
"We'll get there in time," he answered.
I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and sucked in a deep breath. After I exhaled, I met his eyes, trying to convey how serious the issue was.
"I won't risk damage to the vault contents during the fight. I'm going there now to take what's mine. And be glad I won't take your Kingdom, as I am the rightful heir of Ackerton. Also, be glad I intend to get in and out without being seen. Or having to kill anyone."
"There are several treasures there unrelated to--"
I slammed the desk, causing an inkwell to jump up and bounce off and down to the ground where it broke and splattered ink on everything. Rhenius quickly lifted a stack of documents to stop them from getting splashed.
"Please be mindful of whom you talk to. If you don't want to tell me where it is, I'll just go and take everything. You have no idea, Rhenius," I trembled and shook my head. "Do you want to know what triggers me, what drives me to kill gods?"
"Enlighten me," he hissed. The prince was pissed more because the knights outside were listening to everything.
"Family. Hurt my family or anything related to it, and kingdoms vanish. Gods die. Damn, your brother died because he insulted a girl that resembled my niece!"
He didn't reply.
"And slavery. A century ago I wiped out the Church of Bundeus from the Auvanini continent because they were using slavery to increase His amount of faith. I still have a few temples in my item box. I can think of some castles to drop them over."
Rhenius dropped the stack of documents on the other side of the desk and leaned to assess the damage caused by the broken inkwell. Who doesn't nail their inkwells to the desk on a ship?!?
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"Second basement of the castle. I would like if you kept the treasury intact."
I stood and cracked my neck. Doing the best Batman impression a girl could do, I growled, "Should've cooperated from the start."
I shape-shifted into the needle-tail and took wing, going first intangible to go through the walls and then invisible.
----------------------------------------
An hour later I saw the first landmarks of the continent. I oriented myself and banked south-east. Another hour following the contours of the coast and I saw familiar landmarks. The cove where I fought against the [Dread Pirate] Ninefingers, my brother. I turned inland and flew in a beeline toward the capital of Virturia.
The city grew in the last several centuries. The farm where the Master had his secret training facility had been swallowed by the budding metropolis. The wattle-and-daub buildings became stone and a shining palace stood on the tallest hill.
I landed on a tall tower near the castle and brought Marlowe out of the storage.
"They are good, I worked on some of them. I assume you are going to the Royal Vaults."
"Why would anyone do that? No, even if you trigger the traps, you'd survive them," If he could, Marlowe would've rolled the doll's eyes. He studied me, "Can you turn into a bigger bird? I can guide you."
"I don't see why we need to fly. I'll just walk there." I put the doll on my shoulder and skulked toward the palace.
Being inside a metropolis such as this brought a huge benefit. My Mana Wellspring was siphoning MP like crazy. I could cast a Luck bonus of fifty points and still remain capped. With {Hide Presence} and other stealth Perks, I literally walked into the palace, as invisible and unseen as a ghost. While I didn't have any trap detection Skills aside from [Master Aikido]'s perception bonus, all the traps I found until I reached the stairs to the second basement failed to trigger due to my grandmaster stealth skill.
At the bottom of the stairs lied a circular room whose only feature was a three-meter-tall sturdy door. It hummed with the power of several enchantments. I became intangible and tried to go through the door. A trap triggered.
A portcullis made of gleaming silver metal fell down and became energized with some kind of lightning-esque spell.
"This is Primal Lightning. Don't touch it even if you are immune to normal electricity," Marlowe advised.
"Bah. Over this loud crackling? You might as well bring a marching band, it wouldn't make a difference. Anyway, this lightning is imbued with a step above. While normal lightning burns, this one disintegrates."
"I thought you knew the traps."
"This is not one of mine. It probably was installed by one of the previous Kings."
I sighed, frustrated. "What is inside that they want so dearly to keep hidden?"
I needed to work on deactivating that trap. I started using {Analyze Magic}.
> Primal Lightning Grid
>
> Ultra Rare Magical Item
>
> Charge: 9999/10000
>
> A trap created by a genius enchanter will disintegrate all that comes in contact with the silver-plated portcullis. It also protects the walls, roof, and floor from intrusion.
Going through the walls or the floor was out of the question.
I had to test it. I took a rock from storage and tossed it at the portcullis. The rock became fine silt and the grid lost a charge. The answer to how to get past it became obvious. I brought a shrine of Bundeus from storage right on top of the grid. The purple lightning arced from the portcullis and consumed the small stone building. I kept tossing boulders at it, each draining from five to ten charges.
The guard arrived before I could drain the trap.
"Intruder! Surrender in name of King Romulus!" A man shouted from the top of the stairs.
I tossed a few boulders in the room to create shadows and hid. The knights climbed down the staircase and started to search the room. Whenever I could, I'd drop a large rock or a boulder at the portcullis straight from the item box.
"Sir, I smell a woman," One of the knights said. He was a wolf-kin, although his face looked normal to me. His helmet either hid his ears or worse.
"Show yourself, coward!" The knight captain challenged. When I didn't answer, he focused his rage on the wolf-kin knight, "Useless mutt, find that woman!"
Prejudice. Prejudice never changes. It was the same old story.
Under Bundeus, humanity became haughty and ensconced in a superiority complex. This complex was born from the cheat that was the Perk shop. While most species have a limited selection of racial Perks, humans could obtain almost any Perk, creating nasty combinations. Even a century after the deity's demise, these old habits remain strong. We had to remember that people could extend their longevity by a large amount. The stronger humans were all born way before I killed the deity and fucked up the Human Perk shop.
I can only imagine how talented this wolf-kin was if he made it into the palace knights. There wasn't any kin in the expeditionary fleets.
"I want two guards next to the portcullis," the commander said. The kin knight and another one took the spots. "Don't touch the grate or you'll die. The rest of you, comb the room. Our lady invader is here somewhere," The knight-captain scanned the room carefully and touched a boulder. "And crush these rocks. They're in the way."
I moved to the middle of the stairs and used {Absolute Clinging} to latch to the wall.
The knights took their swords and charged them with magic. They slashed the boulders as if they were made of cheese. Frowning, I placed conical barriers in front of the two knights guarding the portcullis and another inverted cone without the tip pointing at the middle of the gate to work like a funnel. Then Marlowe made a huge gust of wind blow down the stairs toward the gate. The smaller rocks were funneled toward the grate and were disintegrated with the sound of several burst shocks.
I had Marlowe cast the wind spell so I could fully concentrate on the item box. I tossed all sorts of objects into the wind, without pausing to watch them get picked up and shoved into the trap.
Glancing at the knights down in the lobby, they had pierced the floor with their swords and were using them to hold back against the wind. The two guarding the portcullis couldn't move or they'd leave the protection of the cones in front of them and get pushed into the disintegrating portcullis.
I only stopped throwing things when I heard a metallic ring over the shouts of the knights. Glancing at the trap, it was at zero charges. I threw some metallic implements to test and they clattered against the portcullis and then on the gate behind.
I sent him to storage and became intangible and invisible as I ran down the stairs, past the recovering knights and through the portcullis, gate and all. I'd reached the secret vault and discovered the reason it was so well protected.