Mila
“Treasure!” Aalam looked around the inheritance’s warehouse like a child in a candy store, the expression on his face one she hadn’t seen since their last vacation, when they’d gone on a helicopter ride over the grand canyon.
“What’s that?” He pointed to a pile of silvery metal ingots nearly a dozen meters high, beside which one of the five E rank golems in the warehouse was frozen.
“Refined Antimagic Tin.” Mila shared Nana Xara’s explanation with Aalam and tried not to laugh. “It has rather extreme qi, mana, and psyforce blocking capabilities, so it is often used in the construction of hats to block telepathy and mind control powers.”
It was a true explanation, but Mila still found it funny.
Aalam, on the other hand, just moved onto the next thing to catch his eye, a metallic barrel filled with some kind of purple dust. “What about that?”
“Shade Dust. It’s a material left behind when certain types of ghosts are killed and is often used in alchemy.”
“What about that?” Aalam pointed to a small pile of transparent gems, mostly violet and blue, which reminded Mila of rupees from Zelda games.
“Primal Energy Stones.” Mila felt a bit shocked by what she was hearing from Nana Xara. “They can be absorbed to help level up.”
“What about—”
“Hey, Aalam, what if I just tell you about every item one by one?” Aalam was in an excited state, so, if she didn’t stop him now, she knew him well enough to know he’d ask her about every item in the entire large warehouse in a random fashion, which would make the process take at least twice as long.
“Okay.” Aalam nodded his head quickly and Mila couldn’t help one of her minds comparing him to a golden retriever watching someone about to throw a ball. He was just so excited, and it was making her excited as well.
They then started walking around the four story warehouse, made of seventeen rooms ranging from the size of a small closet to the size of a professional basketball stadium, and Nana Xara told her about each and every item, information she then shared completely with Aalam, minus some snarky side comments.
The inheritance didn’t hold everything the Shadow Thief had ever stolen, just what she, as a C rank, had considered to be of passable value. But that still consisted of a couple hundred metric tons of magical metals, enough materials to supply the industrial alchemy lab of a C rank force for a couple dozen years, and several tens of thousands of artifacts and one time use talismans.
Materials, unlike artifacts, Nana Xara explained could be considered as having different grades when used to make artifacts of different ranks. Moonlight iron for example, the metal the inheritance had the most of, would be considered Epic grade when used for F rank artifacts, Uncommon grade when used for E rank artifacts, and Inferior when used for D rank artifacts.
The inheritance didn’t hold much in the way of plant life, maintaining the effectiveness of magical plants difficult, but it did contain quite a few gems, a whole lot of monster remains, several hundred skill orbs, and thousands of information orbs stolen from various sects and powers, such as those taken from the Gale Clan.
Altogether though, other than the Primal Energy Stones they’d found at the beginning, some of the information orbs which were bound to be useful, and the various training artifacts, there wasn’t much which would be that useful for either her or Aalam’s cultivation, and that didn’t seem right.
She and Aalam looked through the various spatial storage artifacts housed in the inheritance, finding even more materials, but no big surprises.
“Okay,” Aalam said, rubbing his hands together with excitement. “The good stuff has to be hidden somewhere. There’s not a single Legendary grade or higher artifact, skill orb, or material in here. Yet there is still so much to play with.”
He then started running around the warehouse while Mila began looking through the information orbs with one mind and had another keep using her max possible power to use the effects of Evil Eyes - Lust on the soul fragment of the Shadow Thief.
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Given the metaphysical oddness of souls, the effects of the skill worked on the soul fragment even though she couldn’t technically look at it.
“You know, I didn’t say anything beforehand, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen Aalam look truly joyful since I met him,” Nana Xara sent.
“Yeah.” Mila audibly sighed. “This is what he’s usually like when he sees something wondrous, or at least that he considers wondrous. I’ve seen the same excited kid mode both when flying over the Grand Canyon and when going to Lego Land.” She thought for a second. “Also when he cracked how to fix the plagues. This is probably most similar to that, as I would bet one of my legs at least two of his minds are thinking about what he could make with the resources we’ve already found.”
“He’s a natural born crafter then. Most of the best are like that.”
“Mila! Mila!” Mila heard Aalam yelling her name from the largest of the warehouse rooms, so she ran over. There she found Aalam with his right hand against one of the giant room’s walls, the shelf which had been where he was standing hovering two meters off the ground above his head.
The room was pretty much filled, with piles of materials and rows of shelves taking up almost its entire space, so there wasn’t really a good spot to place the shelf Aalam was holding, but, before doing anything else, Mila took the shelf from him and telekinetically brought it to an open spot on the other side of the room a couple hundred meters away.
Aalam was usually very careful and considerate, but, when he got excited, he’d become incredibly focused on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, and Mila had gotten into the habit of taking care of the things he ignored before getting drawn into whatever had made him excited.
When she returned, she found Aalam drawing a very complicated rune making use of darkness, light, and water Laws using the Left Hand of the Runescribe. It took him several minutes to draw it, and she didn’t fully understand what was going on.
Nana Xara, however, did.
“That wall there isn’t made of the same material as the rest of the inheritance, but a higher grade stone called Phase Stone. Normally, you would be able to walk through it as easily as if it were air, along with anything wrapped in your aura, but right now it’s sealed by something.”
“Your senses are somewhat able to make it out now that your attention has been drawn to it, but Aalam’s Spacetime Sensing and Crafter’s Senses skills probably gave him a much better view of the seal.”
“More importantly, though, there is a high grade C rank obfuscation formation set up to stop anyone from noticing the wall in the first place, powerful enough to even block the special sight of your Third Eye given your limited Perception, so how did Aalam find it?”
“Aalam, how did you find this wall?”
Aalam looked over at her. “I noticed the feeling of paused time behind the wall and wanted to check it out. Then I noticed this seal. I think there’s some kind of obfuscation formation I accidentally broke.”
“Paused time, often useful for keeping cultivation resources fresh, but rather difficult to set up, and most likely beyond the capabilities of the Shadow Thief.” Nana Xara sounded contemplative. “She probably stole some kind of artifact capable of keeping time frozen in a room without cultivators. Those are usually hard to find.
“Also, Mila, try to get Aalam to hide the fact his temporal Laws are so strong. Normally, time and space Laws are the hardest to advance, but that seems reversed for Aalam.”
Aalam finished writing his rune and then telekinetically pushed it into the wall, something about the wall changing. Then, without consulting her, he just walked right through.
“It’s completely safe. The seal has been deactivated, so you can just walk right in.”
Mila took a deep breath, feeling like Harry Potter in King’s Cross Station trying to enter platform 9 and 3/4 for the first time, and then she walked right through the wall.
What she found was quite different than what she’d been expecting. She’d thought there’d be a room filled with artifacts, skill orbs, and materials. Maybe some cool lights. At least something wondrous. Instead, there was a stone room the size of a closet, smaller even than the smallest room in the warehouse, and inside the room was a pedestal, which looked to be made of a black onyx-like material, with only one artifact resting on top of it, a simple iron-looking ring.
“Oh, interesting,” Nana Xara said as Aalam just stared at the ring. “That’s a Temporal Pedestal. It’s made by carving a natural treasure called Temporal Stone into the shape of a pedestal and its use is to pause time for any non-living artifact. On top is what looks to be a C grade spatial storage ring, probably the one used by the Shadow Thief in her prime, and, through the use of the pedestal, time is frozen for whatever is inside.”
“Nana Xara, how do we gain access to the resources inside the spatial storage ring?” Mila asked out loud, making it obvious to Aalam she was consulting Nana Xara.
“You can just reach in. The pedestal can’t affect any living creatures, but I wouldn’t try for now. The Shadow Thief probably had it booby trapped somehow and her traps wouldn’t be like the door.”
“Nana Xara says we should wait to try and access the resources in the ring until I finish charming the soul fragment,” Mila told Aalam. “We might lose the resources inside if we don’t.”
“Alright.” Aalam walked out of the room and Mila followed him. “I’m going to go study the nine golems I haven’t damaged yet to try and figure out more about how they function. I feel I might be able to get a couple breakthroughs from that.”
Aalam then raised his hand for a high five, something they used to do a lot, and Mila slapped it, internally feeling very weird.
“I’ll go talk to Isaiah then.”
Aalam excitedly ran toward the nearest golem, and Mila shook her head slightly before climbing up the stairs and heading outside the inheritance.