Everyone in the room held their breaths... their eyes wide open, fixed on the miracle unfolding before them.
The beautiful maiden immediately prostrated herself, forehead touching the floor in reverence. The old monk stood frozen, whether from shock or some profound emotion, Ishiki couldn't tell. His weathered features had gone slack as if he was watching a prophecy being fulfilled.
Ishiki looked at the box with a sly grin, the top lid just disappeared into thin air as if it never actually existed.
The contents within made his eyes gleam with conflicting emotions: awe and greed warring for dominance.
Inside the treasure box rested an elegant tachi, sheathed within a silver saya that seemed to drink in light and reflect it back two folds. The scabbard was completely devoid of markings, there were no engravings, no ornamentation and yet its surface gleamed with perfection. It mirrored everything that touched it, including Ishiki's own face staring back at him with barely contained excitement.
'Damn... this looks expensive.'
Though he was slightly disappointed that the treasure contained no money, just a weapon. His gamer instincts had been hoping for gold, gems or something similar.
'I'm sure it would fetch a high price. After all, if the saya is this exquisite, how magnificent must the blade itself be?'
He couldn't wait to unsheathe the glamorous tachi when he was stopped by the blabbering of the old monk.
The elderly man looked at him with tears streaming down his weathered face, eyes burning with emotions...
"Oh Heavens! I have been blessed. That box has been here for over 50 years and no one has ever been able to even bulge the lid." He paused and looked at Ishiki and then continued in his shaky voice.
"But the great young master destroyed the lid without even a single trace, now i believe that you are the best candidate for becoming the next emperor."
Ishiki looked at him with a bewildered expression and then forced a twitching smile. 'Eh... hehe, how do i tell this old man that i didn't do anything.'
But looking at the condition, he was being praised and honestly... it was kinda good. Nobody had ever praised him like this, after all. His whole life had been an exercise in being invisible, unremarkable and forgotten.
The shinobi who had been silent all this time finally opened his eyes and looked at the sword inside the box. His eyes narrowed a little, his expression remained inscrutable behind that mask, Ishiki couldn't tell if he was smiling, frowning, or planning something.
He shook his head, dismissing the paranoid thought, and looked back at the silver tachi with renewed hunger. 'Time to check what's behind that glossy cover!'
Ishiki picked up the tachi and stood up, the blade indeed was a little heavy and the pommel was rough and untouched, perfect from grip.
Suddenly a few messages flooded Ishiki's view.
[You have obtained a Vestige]
'Huh? A what? Is this some kind of item classification system? Well, I don't even know how to check my inventory or whatever. But first—the thing in front of me.'
He stared greedily at the sword cradled in his hands, anticipation building with every passing second.
'1...2...3...' He took a deep breath and pulled the actual sword out of the Saya.
There was... nothing.
Everyone froze once again, this time surely from pure shock.
There was nothing beneath the silvery gleaming Saya, there was nothing over the pommel. Ishiki looked at it in panic...
'What the- Did it break or what?' He peered desperately inside the saya, hoping to find the blade somehow stuck within, but the scabbard was completely empty.
The tachi didn't have a blade to begin with.
It was bladeless. A hilt without purpose. A weapon that couldn't wound.
'This... this can't be!'
His shoulders slumped as a torrent of emotions crashed through him, disappointment, frustration and anger at his perpetual bad luck.
Of course the legendary sealed treasure would be broken. Of course the world would dangle hope in front of him before snatching it away.
He wanted to hurl this useless thing across the room. But he refrained. And all these emotions weren't just because of this one thing...
'Well... not like anything's ever in my hands. Still, it would have been nice to get something usef—'
His thoughts died halfway as something slammed into his abdomen with the force of a battering ram.
Both he and the shinobi were caught completely off-guard—before either could react, they were heralded into the wall by what felt like a devastating kick, except the impact hit them simultaneously from the same source.
THUD!
BOOOM!
"Agh! what in the world!"
Ishiki was having trouble pulling himself out of the rubble, good thing his spine was holding... barely though.
'What did that damn old man just do?' he did catch a glimpse of the old man moving. And now there was a weird noise of bones crackling and flesh being ripped apart.
The shinobi was already running forward through the dust cloud. Ishiki pushed himself up and looked in his hand, the silver Saya and the bladeless tachi were still in his hands.
He could have done something to help. Only if this cursed weapon had an actual blade.
'Goddamn it!'
But staying in that obscuring dust cloud was tactical suicide, so he followed behind the shinobi on instinct alone.
As he suspected, something massive attacked the walls where they'd been standing, sending tremors through the entire building, making the ancient structure groan like a dying beast.
"AHH... LOOKS LIKE I MISSED THE KID, HAHA"
A soft, giggling voice echoed through the room, playful and utterly wrong coming from whatever had just attacked them.
Ishiki's eyes widened... the voice, it was familiar, he'd heard it recently. How could he forget something so distinctly unsettling?
He gritted his teeth as realization turned into horror.
'No way... it's that thing from before.'
The creature that had ambushed them in the woods. The one that had been stabbed and pushed off a horse and laughed about it.
Ishiki stopped just behind the shinobi... they were now out of the dust cloud and the maiden was frozen still on the side, tears streaming down her widened eyes. She was terrified out of her mind.
Actually, who wouldn't be terrified? Ishiki himself was barely holding his sanity together with mental duct tape. Anyone claiming they wouldn't be afraid were probably not human.
And more than that he was horrified by the sudden change of events... and then as the dust cloud settled, the horror itself came into view.
Ishiki's features flushed with immediate, visceral disgust as soon as he saw the first tentacle unravel, and by the time the thing revealed the other three appendages, his heart was hammering faster than it ever had, threatening to crack his ribs from the inside.
'What in the hell is that thing? Disgusting... absolutely disgusting!'
"Please stay behind me." The shinobi said, unsheathing his two blades.
Before them stood something that couldn't be called anything from human standards, It was a plump mass of meat shaped vaguely humanoid, but wrong in every conceivable way.
Four tentacles protruded from its back like an octopus that had been grafted onto a human torso. The appendages writhed independently, each one thick as a tree trunk, dripping with translucent mucus that sizzled when it hit the floor.
Worse, so much worse—the entire body looked like shredded meat stitched together by an incompetent surgeon. Muscle fibers exposed and glistening. Skin hanging in strips. while having a human face.
The juxtaposition made it infinitely more horrifying.
'Stay... calm! Stay calm!'
Ishiki took deep, shuddering breaths, trying desperately to slow his racing heart and quiet his screaming mind.
"UGHHH!"
His stomach emptied its non existent contents.
'How... how the fuck am I supposed to stay calm?!'
Before Ishiki could regain proper control of his senses, the abominations tentacles lurched forward, moving with unnatural speed.