Chapter 88 - Vault (Patreon)

Initially, he wanted to buy only a few slaves in Volantis on the journey back home to the Cartharys, but with the money he had now, coupled with the connections of the Clan Ferros, he could buy an entire company right away.

The 50,000 Gold Dragon Coins that were obtained from the loot were far more than enough to buy even some powerful Beyonder salves, which were already far better than his initial plans.

The date of the Doom of the Valyria was approaching, and if he wanted to survive in this cruel world, he needed to act fast. He needed to quickly create a powerbase for himself that would help him gather as much knowledge and wealth from the Freehold as possible...

Valkorion actually even worked with the eventuality that the Doom would never happen, but even in that case, it was manageable because he would have created his own faction, and having people to do things for you was always better than doing everything alone.

He then needed to change his plans a bit and make a longer stop at Volantis to buy some slaves. Initially, he planned to make an investment of around 10,000 Gold Dragon Coins into buying slaves, but as he had this much wealth, Valkorion decided to go all-out and use 40,000 Gold Dragon Coins to 50,000 Gold Dragon Coins.

If one thought about it, it was a staggering amount of money that would allow one to buy whole slave armies of thousands if one wanted to buy just ordinary slaves. As the Gold Dragon Coins were far more precious than the currencies of the other nations of the world, Valkorion predicted that with this amount, he could have something around 5,000 trained slaves easily.

Yet he wanted just the quality.

He needed slaves that were Beyonders or were tested for the aptitude to become one, and the price of those was very steep. Aside from that, the rest of the slaves that he bought had one very strict criterion...

All of them needed to be Pure-Blooded Valyrians or some unique races of the world. As he was technically speaking, preparing for the inevitable exodus from the Freehold, if the Valyrian Freehold perished in the Doom, then he would preserve at least part of its culture and race.

And if the Doom didn't happen, he would have left either way. 

Valkorion knew that staying in the Valyrian Freehold wasn't safe for him at all. Even, if he didn't count the possibility of being hostile to the Church of the Dragon Gods, then there was still the question of the fall of the House Tenebraenys.

He knew that such a powerful House couldn't fall out of nowhere. 

And no... he didn't feel any bit of a need to avenge his family or other edgy bullshit.

He knew that he was too small of a player to be involved in something where the real players and hitters were the High Sequence Beyonders. In the conflicts where most possibly even Angels were involved, he could die faster than uttering a word.

Valkorion held no illusions that if some enemies that brought down the House Tenebraenys found out about his existence, then no matter how he behaved or what he said, because he really didn't care about his destroyed House and killed his family, nobody would really believe him.

In a world where Houses and familial piety were held high, it was really improbable that someone wouldn't want to avoid the fall of their House or the murder of their family. Valkorion was rather a pragmatist on this, so he knew how to pick up his battles and knew that the battle against the possible enemies of the House Tenebraenys was not really worth it.

When he finished looting the corpses, as it seemed, then aside from the Alumeth Alard, the other Beyonders were poor as fuck. Gotrik found loot that was worth only a few thousand Gold Dragon Coins, including some Sealed Artifacts. 

But he got his hands on two Sequence 6 Beyonder Characteristics, and each one of these could be sold for around 1,500 Gold Dragon Coins if the right buyer was found.

Interestingly enough, Mellisandre, too, joined the looting efforts, though mainly for the Beyonder Characteristics of the two Sequence 6 Necromancers as they could be remade into the Sealed Artifacts that could apparently detect Beyonders of the Death Pathways even if they were using some methods to conceal their aura.

Mellisandre explained that Sealed Artifacts like this were usually used by the various City-States and Kingdoms of the known world to discover the members of the Cult of the Dammed because only they would be hiding from the sight of others.

That was because, compared to the other Beyonders of the Death Pathway, the ones of the Cult of the Dammed were corrupted, and their aura was very distinctive and had a rather unforgettable and unmistakable feeling to it.

"So what now? Are you going to open the Vault and take the thing for what we came for?"

Valkorion asked Mellisandre, who was standing in front of the huge stone vault doors that led to the Vault of the Extraordinary Ingredients, which was as much of their target as it was one for the Cult of the Dammed.

"Opening the vault would take a bit more finesse... you know, the reason why those cultists were stuck there, is that the vaults in this place are two-phase one. You need to have basically two keys, while the second one is not really a key in the first place."

Mellisandre slowly said as she took out the key and searched for the hidden keyhole on the stone vault doors. Even the keyhole was hidden, and one needed to find it; to achieve so, the person needed to have very high and powerful Spiritual Awareness.

"Even if you obtain the keys to the door, it would be useless as long as you are Beyonder of different Pathway. When the Chaosflame Covenant was in power, long before this place was called Undead Asylum Catacombs, they enchanted all of the vaults and everything so that only the Beyonders of their Patwhays could open them."

Because the Chaosflame Covenant was the dominant power and held absolute control over the Lord of Light Pathway, there was practically zero chance that any other person that was from the outside would be able to become Beyonder of the already mentioned Pathway.

Besides, they controlled all the Extraordinary Ingredients needed to concoct the potions needed to become the Beyonder. Thus, they created a rather smart way to prevent people from different Pathways from opening their Vaults and facilities.

Fortunately, Mellisandre was Beyonder of this Pathway and held rather strong control over Fire, not to mention, she carried Blessings from the person that was closest to the ascending to the Godhood in this Pathway.

So the moment she found the keyhole, she inserted the key while at the same time, a small wave of red flames swirled around as the mechanism inside the stone vault doors started slowly opening the vault.

For the first time in many, many centuries, it was opened.