There was enchantment in the air.
Charles walked past the mouth of the cave, his path lit by embers. As he moved, his boots crunched on gold coins spread across the floor like wind-driven sand. For him, the mana crystals in the walls gave off a ghostly light—blue and violet pulses sparkling like starlight on a heavenly ocean.
The air was warm—but to Charles, it felt like the warmth of wealth, power, and stories long buried, now waiting for him to claim them.
The Eternal Emberdrake's treasure hoard was beyond what anyone could have imagined.
Gold lay in piles, with jewels in chalices and racks full of weapons, armor, scrolls, and magically-illuminated books. Color-coded crystal cores filled towers atop the rest.
It wasn't a vault.
It was a realm.
Karel murmured, "Oh my God," with wide eyes. "This... this isn't a dragon hoard." This is the graveyard of kingdoms."
"No," Charles said softly, his eyes shining with the light of a conqueror. "This is what an empire leaves behind... And now it's mine."
The Vault That Could Buy the World
Charles stood at the peak of madness—here, madness meant gold.
Millions of coins sparkled underfoot. Jeweled hilts, tiaras, and helms from emperors filled the room—the Grand Nexus Vault overflowed with transformative wealth.
And this?
This was only one room.
He looked up with his lips slightly parted, his awe plain. Colonnades of crystallized fire essence, carved straight from the mountain's bones, held up the cavern ceiling thousands of meters above. Above Charles, layered vaults, lairs, tunnels, and passageways—shaped by dragons over thousands of years—stretched upward.
No… millions of years.
On Earth, Charles had climbed Everest: 8,848 meters of supremacy.
This dragon mountain in the Highlands of Throm Vale made it look like a bump in a sandbox.
Twice as tall. Nearly 17,700 meters. But most important...
Half of it was hollow.
Charles realized half the mountain's volume, from crown to cavern root, was honeycombed with draconic tunnels, vaulted lairs, ritual sanctums, and treasure crypts. He tried to imagine that scale. And one-quarter of that hollow space belonged to the hoard.
A quarter of it brimmed with treasure.
Gold, gems, artifacts, armor, scrolls, relics, enchanted weapons, and ancient tomes filled the chambers.
He heard SIGMA's voice in his head, and it was more respectful than usual.
[The last calculation is done. There are 1.15 × 10¹² cubic meters of empty space. The volume of the treasure is 2.89 × 10¹¹ cubic meters. The number of coins is about 2.05 × 10¹⁷. The total value of the hoard is about $229 quadrillion in sovereign-standard units.]
Charles stopped moving. Blinked. Figured out.
Then he blinked.
He calculated in his head.
He whispered, "Two hundred... twenty-nine... Quadrillion?"
Donald fell to his knees on a pile of melted scepter heads. "I was once robbed for a copper chip. Now I'm going to die inside a mountain that makes diamonds."
Wendy, perched on emerald codices, laughed shakily. "Charles, one wrong sneeze and the planet's value could tank."
Kael let out a low whistle. "This mountain doesn't have wealth. It is wealth."
"Correction," Charles said, eyes burning with vision. "This is the seed of civilization. A myth-powered megavault of legacy."
SIGMA continued its breakdown in Charles's mind, delivering the inventory like an oracle reading from a celestial ledger.
First came the gold, an ocean of coins stacked in draconic formations: ridged columns, ceremonial spirals, and even hoarded nests.
Over half the treasure's volume was pure gold. More than 200 quadrillion coins, each one enchanted for preservation, gleamed as if freshly minted, and Charles could almost hear the echoes of extinct kingdoms that had once paid tribute in desperation and fear.
Next was the weaponry, shimmering with power; it occupied about 20% of the vault. There were over fifty billion enchanted weapons and armor sets, each bearing relic marks from long-forgotten orders. Some spearheads had been forged from sunsteel, others from lightning itself.
Cloaks, stitched with phoenix thread, and battleplate, made of dragonbone alloys, had never rusted—if war kept an archive, this was its holiest.
Then scrolls and tomes—parchment, lava leather, soul-silk—containing sealed spells and curses. The air pressed heavy with magic.
There were more than two billion documents here. Some whispered softly; others glowed faintly with old magic. They were not just books but also names of gods, plans for void engines, and forbidden ways to grow things.
One book, The Ember Codex, went further than all the others: it held the last mental imprint of the First Flame Sovereign and radiated consciousness.
Next: crystals and elemental cores—over seven billion, pulsing with mythic power, sorted in impossible stacks.
And the relics: fifty million artifacts, each legendary, each reality-bending. Power radiated beyond analysis.
Kael picked up a sword, its edge shimmering with active spatial distortion. "This one," he said, "cut through my boot just by thinking rude thoughts."
Donald held a relic that glowed with celestial runes. "I think this pendant has just offered to resurrect my great-grandmother."
"Tell it to wait," Charles muttered. "I'm busy building a kingdom."
Charles climbed a pile of treasure and sat on a throne made of crystallized dragonbone fused with embersteel. Beneath him, a sealed vault platform buzzed with starforged sigils.
Nimbus, big and bright, was curled up on the ridge behind him, watching like a king made of thunderclouds and firestorms. The eggs under her tail pulsed softly, as if they were responding to the memory of her ancestors, soaked into the walls.
Wendy looked up at him with squinty eyes. "So what's next? We just live in a bank vault the size of a mountain?"
Charles said, "No," and his voice rose like a prophecy. "We build. Temples. Vaults. Foundries. Shrines. A place for dragons to hatch. Places where relics are kept. We make this place a city of memory and a city of legacy."
Karel crossed his arms. "And what about the part where this mountain has more riches than all the kingdoms put together?"
Charles smiled. "Simple. We let it out into the world little by little. Under control. Planned. Income from pilgrimages. Taxes for the temple. Trade with relics. And we make sure that no stupid kingdom gets too greedy."
Donald said, "I can already smell five assassins coming."
Wendy tapped a crystal crown on her head. "Let them come. I have insurance against firestorms."
Kael rolled his eyes. "We're really making a dragon-themed financial empire."
Charles raised his hand, and flames crackled at the tips of his fingers. "We're building the best dragon-themed financial empire," they said.
The mountain waited under gold and silence, gods and the echoes of dying empires.
Now? It was home to Charles.
Dominion of Night
Charles stood at the top of the Emberdrake Vault with his flame-tipped fingers curled in meditation. Around him, the mountain groaned with fantasies of power: a symphony of qi relics, golden floods, storm-caged artifacts, and relics of dead gods. But to him, something was missing. Not money. Not majesty.
Resonance.
He held out one hand, palm up, and whispered to SIGMA through their soul link.
"Begin the magnetic convergence protocol. Dark elemental filter. Full range. Every room."
A break.
Then SIGMA responded, not with words, but with the air itself.
[Confirmed. Setting up the Absolute Affinity Field. Warning: Manifestation will change the way space looks and make nearby living things sense primitive fear.]
Charles smirked. "Let them tremble."
A pulse of black light exploded outward from his hand. It was not a beam or a flare, but a wave of gravity-stained shadow, like midnight turned into force. The qi in the air rippled. The vault walls warped. Time itself seemed to shudder.
And then… they came.
One by one, across countless kilometers of tunnels, vaults, side-chambers, and relic sanctums, the darkness answered.
Artifacts buried under gold, lost between tomes, sealed beneath forgotten bones—all began to stir.
Each item rose from its resting place like a ghost exhumed.
Twenty-three relics in total.
Only twenty-three.
They floated through the air like black comets trailing shadow, each one dragging behind it a ripple of dark qi so dense it shimmered violet. The light in the chamber dimmed. The temperature plummeted.
Wendy gasped audibly, her dagger slipping an inch in its sheath. "What the hell…"
Kael's position changed without him knowing it, and he drew his blade halfway. "Does anyone else feel that?"
Donald even flinched, and his beard stood up like it had been in a hurricane. He said, "Something's coming. And it isn't nice."
Then they saw them.
Relics kept appearing: swords blacker than the vacuum, masks that shone without reflecting, and broken books that bled shadow-ink in the air. They spiraled through the vault like birds coming home, forming a perfect spiral around Charles.
He didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
He stood calmly in the eye of the dark storm, a monarch receiving his forgotten crown.
There they were.
Darkness Relics.
There weren't many of them, but each one gave out a feeling of wrongness that was so old it seemed to come from God. Charles counted to twenty-three. Twenty-three artifacts out of fifty million. Each one humming in tune with his own hidden love.
He stepped up.
The first was a blade smooth and black as obsidian, with edges that shone like tears caught in moonlight. The writing said:
"Umbra Severis—Fang of Forgotten Crowns."
There was no sound. But as soon as his palm touched the handle, a vision came to him: empires tumbling, kings begging, and a voice saying, "Serve no light."
He grinned.
The second was a mask—half broken, with runes etched backward and burning faint violet.
"The Shroud of No-Name."
SIGMA intoned softly:
[Function: Anonymity in all realms. Reflects no light, no thought. Used once by a Cultivator Assassin Lord known only as The Echo. Target kill count: 2,048.]
"Adding that to my nightwear," Charles whispered.
A third relic floated above an inverted pedestal. A crystal heart, cracked through the center, glowing with spiraling shadow.
"Heart of the Hollowed Star."
Warning: Resonates only with awakened Darkness affinity. Grants partial immunity to illusion, corruption, and divine surveillance.
He plucked it from the air and felt it vanish into his soulsea like a key returning to its lock.
Behind him, Nimbus shifted slightly, her eyes following him but not interfering. Even she knew this was something older. Something deeper.
Charles turned, hands brushing against a chest sealed with layered void runes.
"Open it," he whispered.
[Confirmed. Dispelling twelvefold warding array.]
The box hissed, then fell silent.
Inside was a cloak—no embroidery, no glitter, just absence. It seemed to drink the light around it.
"Cloak of Eclipsed Silence."
He took it with reverence. It slid into his grasp like it had been waiting for him, folding over his arm with uncanny grace. The very air around it dulled, sound faded, and the vault seemed to breathe more slowly.
Kael's voice echoed faintly from the main chamber, cheerful and oblivious: "Hey boss, I found a ring that breathes fire and cooks meat—do I keep it or is it cursed?"
Wendy yelled back, "Just test it on Donald first!"
Charles tuned them out.
Here, within the silent halo of shadow-bound power, he found his reflection. The others could keep their sunsteel halberds and phoenix-stitched cloaks. These were meant for him.
And yet, even as the artifacts hovered obediently, SIGMA's voice returned—gentle, but resolute.
[Be careful, Master. Your connection to darkness is still sealed. Activating any of these artifacts, especially during your present Foundation Core phase, could put your life in danger. If you don't have a firm dark qi foundation and control over your emotions, artifact backlash is very likely.]
Charles nodded. "Got it."
[Projected safe use threshold: starting the Core Realm. Suggested delay: until the calibration of the post-breakthrough elemental alignment.]
He looked at the swirling halo of forbidden artifacts.
"SIGMA, get all twenty-three artifacts out. Put them in a secured interdimensional vault in your inner inventory, encrypt the index, and separate them by affinity. Mark for future analysis, fixing, and reforging."
[Confirmed. Vault encryption is enabled. Access limited to Master Signature]
The relics pulsed one more time, each putting forth a weak, hesitant hum before breaking up into strands of voidlight and disappearing into SIGMA's protected subspace.
Charles exhaled and rolled his shoulders.
"Of all the billions of relics in this vault," he said, chuckling darkly, "only twenty-three resonate with my main element."
Donald peeked into the chamber, visibly paler. "Good. Maybe next time, your element can send fewer murder vibes?"
Kael grunted. "Next time? If we survive next time, I'm retiring into a tavern rug."
Wendy crossed her arms. "You terrify artifacts, Charles. That's not normal."
Charles just grinned as the Cloak of Eclipsed Silence folded across his shoulder like a whisper from the abyss.
And above it all, the mountain stood silent—knowing its most ancient treasures had finally found their heir.