POV Rio
I keep walking through the dragon's corpse until I end up at the end of the road.
'Sigh. Well, time to channel my inner Ace Ventura.'
Thankfully, the size of the dragon worked in my favor, and it was relatively easy to escape the dragons behind.
'Never doing that again.'
When I got out of the dragon, I decided to check if I could store the dragon, and sure enough, it worked. I won't deny my eye twitched a bit, and I swore I heard the laugh of a certain Chaos Spirit. I took a deep breath and called Cait over. She was sitting on a bed, she brought with her, and she was playing a game of knifey spoony.
"Really?" I ask.
"What, I got bored and needed to do something other than study magic," Cait said.
"Whatever, let's see what we have in this treasure," I say while pushing open a large stone door.
The door was really heavy. It took my telekinesis, my physical pushing, and Cait's pushing to get the door to move. But when it did, we were nearly blinded by the golden light. I knew the place was filled with gold and jewels before, but this... this was something else entirely. It was a literal ocean of gold as far as the eye could see.
"Wow," Cait said with a slack jaw.
"Yeah, no kidding," I respond.
Cait runs off to a tower, and I look at her, confused. She finds a ledge, and I can tell what she is about to do.
"Wait, don't!" I say, but I was too late.
"Geronimo!" Cait said while diving into a massive pile of gold coins.
Crack
I hear a loud crack and look away as Cait is knocked unconscious, as I am pretty sure she shatters her spine. I drag her out of the pile and set her down while waiting for her to revive herself. I also cleaned up the blood she left behind.
"Ugh, that... hurt," Cait says as she wakes up.
"Yeah, no kidding. Who would have thought jumping into a solid pile of metal would hurt?" I reply sarcastically.
"Ugh. It seemed like a good idea at the time," Cait responds sheepishly.
"Well, I am pretty sure only one being can pull it off, and he has super strength and many years of practice," I reply.
"Sooooo.... What are we gonna do with all this gold?" Cait asks while trying to move to a different subject.
"Well, while you were unconscious, I found a book that breaks down the contents of this preservation chamber," I say while putting down the 2-foot-thick book.
THUD
"Wow, uh, how much is on here?" Cait asks.
"Over 60 times the total amount of gold mined from Earth throughout history," I reply.
"Oh, ok... Wait a minute... Uh, that sounds like a lot," Cait says.
"That's because it is. To put it into perspective, there is enough gold here to make gold basically worthless. There are around 7 times more gold here than even silver mined back on Earth. And that's just the gold; there are also Gems, Silver, Platinum, Magi Metals, Cultural Artifacts, Books, and all sorts of other items that would theoretically be priceless," I explain.
"But what will we do with it?" Cait asks.
"No idea. As I mentioned, there is so much here that it essentially renders most of those metals worthless. And not to mention that this world is literally drowning in natural resources. I mean, the sheer amount of ores near the surface, as well as the gems, makes any idea that these items are valuable worthless. We could swap our currency for solid gold bars, and even if we lost a significant amount of them, it would still take centuries to deplete the reserves. So, I guess we will just hold on to them and wait for now. Perhaps consider switching to a gold-backed currency when we have the time. If that is even worth it," I mumble the last part to myself.
I start storing the treasure, but I am careful not to damage any of the cultural artifacts that are stored here. According to the guidebook, when the planet started to freeze, and it was clear nothing could stop it, many races risked everything to bring their treasures here to be protected by Sapphira, the Elder Dragon. In return, the dragon would guard the treasures for as long as she lived, and even in death, she would use her body to seal the doors completely. Many races ended up making the trip, but some never made it, and as such, their culture and history will be lost to the ages. The vault itself was over 1000 years old.
The unfortunate part was that there were no magic artifacts. They were all taken by Discord when he came here last. But the guidebook at least described the artifacts and their history. It wasn't much, but it was something. I was quite saddened to see so many cultures here, knowing that most of them were now extinct. It reminded me of my home, where that monster had wiped out so many people, and their history was now also lost to time. But it at least made me feel better knowing I was helping preserve what little remained.
It took several hours to take everything. By the time we were done, it was dark on the surface, so we decided to wait while I planned out our next move.
"Where to next?" Cait asked.
"Hmm, back to base, and I will have the probes continue to explore. I have enough evidence to suggest that a city still remains on this planet, but it's far to the south, and I don't have precise coordinates. So for the time being, this is where our expedition ends," I reply.
"Wait, there are some people that can live on this h*llhole?" Cait asked, surprised.
"Most likely, but then again, my most recent source of info comes from at least 100 years ago. A lot can happen in a century, so it may just be another ruin. But I will keep some hope," I reply.
"Well, I'll believe it when I see it," Cait responds.
After waiting for sunrise, we head back up our tunnel to the surface and start the trip back to Echo Base. The trip was uneventful. But it gave me time to think of what to do next.
We had several operations coming up. There were a few Raider groups left in the Commonwealth, with intel suggesting several leaving recently. Nuka World needed to be dealt with. The Gunners and Enclave were almost done with their conflict, with most intel pointing towards a Gunner victory. The Gunners still needed to be destroyed, with Quincy being a main target, followed by GNN. Once the Commonwealth was secured, we could move to take over the rest of the areas near us.
The DeRadifiers have been making great progress with almost a 4th of the US being radiation-free. Now, admittedly, I had focused mostly on the Northern territories and states, leaving much of the other areas untouched, but it also allowed me to scavenge many prewar facilities. But thanks to sending out many patrols and the like, we have been massively increasing the speed of decontamination. We had also recently added 4 Vertibirds to our fleet. With most of them flying through Canada to absorb whatever radiation they could detect and even recruit any people they could find. We haven't found many people so far, but I was hopeful we could find a few people.
Captain Zao had started his journey back to China. I tried to warn him that there wasn't anything left, but he insisted on going. Speaking of the ocean, we had started clearing out any pirates in the surrounding waters. Most of the pirate gangs we have fought so far were coming from Maine. Which meant it might be getting close to the time when we need to head to Far Harbor.
'I really don't want to deal with DiMA, but I will have to deal with that eventually since he is Nick's brother. Ugh. That's going to be messy.'
I did not care for DiMA mostly because he was a hypocrite and a cold-blooded murderer. He also seemed like a bit of a cult leader as he has a tendency to use cult brainwashing tactics to convince people to join him. Oh, and he straight up never learns his lesson and tries to reuse the same twisted strategies.
'Hmm, I also need to head to the Big MT. That tech needs to be collected. If I take the AHO, I should be able to get there in around 3 hours, I think.'
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I should go to the Big MT. It was dangerously close to Mr. House and the NCR, which are both groups I really didn't want to have access to Big MT's technology. That, and I might be able to recruit some scientists. Though I was pretty sure only Dr. Mobius could be recruited ethically. But I did have an idea on how to preserve the knowledge of the Think Tank. Their bodies are mostly robotic, which means, like a Robobrain, their mind has to be able to interface with the robotic parts. Which means I can download the knowledge they have, and from there decide who to spare and who to kill. But based on my prior knowledge, I doubted anyone other than Mobius was good enough to be spared. I could also see the darkness in them to see who must be killed.