Chapter 49
This hidden residence of Anarias's stood several hundred yards from the spot where he had conducted his blood sacrifices.
If Elise's group hadn't recovered the lich body's remains—and hadn't tracked the location by its spirituality—no one would ever have found it by sight alone.
But found it they had, and every progression resource Anarias had stockpiled for his early recovery now fell into their hands.
After Mona's shout, Harkian went down first to inspect the chamber.
Then Lofnar.
Then Chalmers.
Only once they had confirmed it was safe did Elise descend the stairs.
The smell below was unpleasant.
The stench of corpses set living skin crawling, and with the place sealed so long, every trace of rot still hung in the air.
Oddly enough, Anarias—a lich body that needed no ordinary sight to perceive the world—had installed lighting.
At the entrance and across the ceiling, magic arrays built around mana crystals gave off a faint glow.
That strange, dreamlike light washed over walls carved into storage shelves, presenting row upon row of transcendent materials to whoever entered.
When Elise arrived, she found Chalmers, Harkian, Mona, Adair, and Lofnar all standing frozen.
She hadn't even gotten the chance to tease them for being sheltered before the sight stunned her too.
"Light above."
The words escaped her.
The contents of those wall shelves were simply too astonishing.
It wasn't that there were eight or ten chests of mana crystals and magical plants.
It was that ordinary mana crystals barely qualified as treasure here.
Anarias had treated mana crystals as common stock, piling them loosely near the entrance and along the left wall's shelves.
Those same shelves held all manner of unnerving undead magic materials, along with potions that made any normal person's skin prickle just looking at them.
The shelves on the right had been converted into a single display.
A magic array ringed the whole section. At its center, planted upright within the shelf, stood a staff.
The ghostly magelight made it look mysterious and unfathomable.
Its shaft was carved with runes of aurumite and mithril, and at its core sat something Elise knew intimately.
A [Pure Mana Crystal].
"A Third-tier staff?!"
Her eyes went wide.
"Was this residence something Anarias meant to abandon after advancing to Third-tier?" Chalmers asked quietly.
The others nodded along.
Anarias kept many hidden bases. Naturally, he wouldn't stage every resource from First-tier to Legendary in a single location.
But a Third-tier setup was already staggering.
More to the point, the Death Sovereign genuinely did not lack for [Pure Mana Crystals]. The man had been reviving since the eleven hundreds of the Light Calendar.
[Appraisal Skill Experience +47.]
Ignoring the lingering strain of her overdrawn spirit energy, Elise cast [Appraisal].
[Dark Side of Fate: Common-grade Third-tier item. Staff.]
The system offered no specific values or effects. Even the name had only come through because Anarias had deliberately engraved it into the runes along the shaft.
But the words "common-grade Third-tier staff" were enough on their own.
In Aurelia, any staff meant for a caster-type Awakened had to be built around a [Pure Mana Crystal].
Ordinary mana crystals merely contained mana of various attributes; their role was to release that mana and improve the casting environment.
A [Pure Mana Crystal] set inside a staff, however, could act directly on spirit energy. That was what let it serve as the core of a true transcendent item.
Which made it very valuable.
Elise's [Light of Megalith] was perfect-grade Second-tier, and even with the Church of Light giving her a friendly price, it had cost her over ten thousand gold coins.
And this [Dark Side of Fate]...
The name alone announced it as a staff of darkness and Fate.
Its price—
No.
This was a staff Anarias had used. It could only be treated as raw material.
Elise saw the problem at once.
Once a [Pure Mana Crystal] was worked into a staff, its crystal structure reshaped itself to the user's spirit energy.
Any second user would receive a diminished amplification effect.
More importantly—even setting aside the possibility that Anarias had left some hidden trick inside—the name [Dark Side of Fate] alone meant the Church of Light could never wield it with an easy conscience.
"High Cleric Elise, fortune has favored us."
Lofnar looked at her, eyes shining.
Here was a man buried under more than ten thousand gold coins of debt.
With this staff in the spoils, he could clear that debt and still come out well ahead.
"It can only be dismantled for materials," Elise said first.
Everyone paused, then nodded in agreement.
"A Third-tier [Pure Mana Crystal] should be worth tens of thousands of gold coins," Mona said, testing the waters.
Tens of thousands.
Enough to buy a Fourth-tier transcendent item—and not even the cheapest kind.
"The Church of Light will appraise it," Elise said.
She couldn't fix the staff's exact value herself, but she trusted the Church.
Chalmers and the others raised no objection.
At the group's signal, Elise stepped forward and took the staff down.
She wrapped the three-foot length in spare clothing from her spatial item, then turned to the rest of the hoard.
The core equipment Anarias had prepared for this lich body was the Third-tier staff; everything else was reserve stock meant to carry him to Third-tier.
Unfortunately, the Death Sovereign practiced death, darkness, and Fate magic. Much of what he owned was unsuitable for clergy of the Church of Light—and some of it wasn't even legal to keep.
[Blood of Agony], for instance, produced by torturing humans.
When the Church of Light found something like that, there was exactly one outcome.
Destruction.
But plenty of good items remained.
[Appraisal Skill Experience +41.]
[Appraisal Skill Experience +45.]
Elise cast [Appraisal] several times running and found things she genuinely wanted.
[Soul Mana Crystal: Perfect-grade Second-tier item. Contains complex mental energy.]
[Isnaya's Fern: Excellent-grade Second-tier item. Can increase the success rate of potion brewing.]
Of the two, the [Soul Mana Crystal] was a special crystal undead creatures used to rapidly build strength.
It differed from attribute mana crystals because the energy inside was mental energy.
But it also differed from a [Pure Mana Crystal], because it acted directly on the soul—and carried contamination as a side effect.
Undead didn't care about soul contamination.
They were already chaotic spiritual aggregates.
Humans were another story.
Harkian's condition alone showed how costly treatment became once mind and soul were tainted.
Elise couldn't use it herself.
But she had contracted Tymis.
And as it happened, a spiritual creature like Tymis—one that lived by devouring spirit energy—could purify such contamination on its own.
Set aside a few Soul Mana Crystals as snacks, and Tymis's advancement would accelerate.
"I need the [Soul Mana Crystals]," Elise said, locking in that choice first.
Then she considered the magical plant, [Isnaya's Fern].
Isnayas was the name of the God of Fate.
By Aurelia's famously blunt naming conventions, Isnaya's Fern was simply a fern blessed by the God of Fate.
Its effect was every bit as mystical.
It raised the success rate of potion brewing.
Picture it.
A potion that should have failed—except the spiritual energies involved suddenly underwent a marvelous reaction, and the brew succeeded instead.
What did that represent?
Elise happened to need to experiment with brewing a breathing elixir tailored to herself.
Of course she wanted that plant.
"High Cleric Elise, you have first choice," Lofnar said, remarkably self-aware this time.
By mercenary rules, the spoils would divide as follows:
Two portions to Elise.
Two to Lofnar.
One each to Mona, Adair, and Chalmers.
The remaining three portions split among the other First-tier Awakened.
And as team leader, Elise chose first.
"We'll return to the city, then divide everything in detail by value," Elise said, in no hurry now.
The trip had failed to complete the Church's original commission, but her gains in the Pyreflame Woods were enormous.
This money, these resources—they would very likely fund her progression all the way to Senior High Cleric.