Chapter 52: Chapter 51: Treasure

“Well, this certainly is a lot easier.” Lloyd said as he walked in front of the group with a large cauldron filled with an awful looking purple liquid, the contents kept bubbling hot with a few enchantments and giving off its horrible black smoke. “I guess this is how it is supposed to be done.”

The party and all their Bonds had their standard issue gas masks to protect them from the military grade bug repellent that Scarlet had prepared the night before while everyone else was taking their long rest. 

After having a chance to get a close look at the insects corpses, Scarlet had been able to identify the chemicals that the bugs had been releasing on death in order to mark their killers and draw more and more of their own kind to swarm them, the smell undetectable to humans, but growing stronger with each one of the monsters they had cut down, until they were causing the entire nest to go into a frenzy.

Their strong sense of smell had allowed the monsters to track them, but it had also served as a great weakness. 

“Got another batch.” Nico stated, pointing out a group of the cat-sized locusts that were all lying on their sides twitching uncontrollably, as the fumes from the potion attacked them from the inside out. 

“Remind me again why people look down on potion making?” Sam asked as she casually stabbed one of the insects.

“Because it is expensive, time consuming, and most stronger monsters have massive bodies that make them resistant to poisoning. But it's great for handling low to mid-level pests, especially if you make one to target them in particular.” Scarlet said, not bothering to join in the killing. 

The bugs weren’t worth the effort of raising her sword or casting a spell.

The bugs averaged level 60 and gave about 30,000 experience points a piece, so Scarlet would have to solo kill all ten million of them just to grow any levels at this point. Even monsters of the same level differed in strength and experience, and hive-like insects tended to be pretty low yield. 

She could only hope that the Queen would offer up more. They just had to find it first.

They had a map of the temple that was… ah…

The Labyrinth being what it was, space wasn’t what you would expect. Mapping in the place was difficult at the best of times, and with the map being over a decade old, the place itself had changed shape in places since humans had last ventured into it. 

Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem for Scarlet, with her scouting abilities, but every once and a while there was a section of corridor that blocked the passage of mana, stopping her from seeing through. It had been a serious annoyance, requiring the party to treck the miles between these seperate sections created by the magic dead zones in order for her to scan the next section for evidence of a way to continue.

But it was as Scarlet crossed over one of these invisible lines and she through out her mana to scout the area that she found something that made her gasp. 

“What is it?” Charles asked immediately, his body becoming tense, as if he was expecting an attack at any moment. 

He couldn’t see the huge grin behind her mask.

“Treasure!”

---

 

“Wow. I’ve heard stories about these but… wow. Just wow.” Lloyd said in disbelieve as he looked across the gym sized room that’s entire floor was covered in an assortment of treasures. Gold and silver coins piled as high as five feet in places, with different pieces of weapons, armor, jewelry and even furniture and pieces of forging and alchemy equipment.

The treasure troves that could sometimes appear within the Labyrinth were the stuff of legends. A room filled with more wealth than most countries had.

And nearly all of it was fake.

Fools Treasure. It was what they called the fakes which hid the true treasures. While they looked and felt like the real thing, they were made up of an unstable type of material which required the presence of extremely high quality magic energy in order to remain stable.

It was why there were stories of adventuring parties who, finding such a mountain of wealth, toss all of their provisions aside in order to make room in their packs, and struggle to fight there ways back from the deep depths weighed down by their prizes, only for the gold that they struggled to bring back with them to turn into slug upon reaching the surface, leaving them nothing for the sacrifices they made along the way.

But even with this possibility, the siren call of the treasure was enough to make people try their luck at finding truly powerful magic items, such as Duke Bryce’s Alchemy Flask of Infinite Mana Potion.

Even so, Charles and his party still looked at the pile of treasure as if they had come across a venomous snake that was prepared to bite, and that was because fake treasure was not the worst thing that lay in a Treasure Room.

“No one touches anything. Sid, scan the pile for anything living. Scarlet, I want evil containing wards over everything.” Charles barked his orders.

“Got it boss.” Sidney said, going down on one need and starting the long chant to search for anything among the treasure that might not be a simple object. 

Meanwhile, Scarlet struggled to contain her excitement as she began to draw out Holy Magic to blanket the area, placing a powerful binding spell onto each and every pile.

“Mimics. Three of them.” Sidney said before pointing towards a pile on his left. “The music box!”

Two arrows, charged with magic energy, flew towards the box within a second, but before the arrows even hit, the small box had dissolved into a sickly black fluid, twisting itself out of the way of the arrows, only getting lightly grazed by the magic energy before it came rushing down towards the party, growing in size from a mere rat to that of a charging bull.

Lloyd moved to intercept, the black creature making contact with his shield and letting out a shriek of pain as his magic energy flowed into it, blasting it to bits.

Two more of the dark creatures came from the treasure and rushed down at the party, but without the element of surprise, the mimics were no threat to them. Sam and her friends took down one, while Charles’ massive magic sword brought a swift end to the other.

“Sid, report.” Charles said, his eyes still vigilant. 

“That is all I could find.” Sidney replied.

“...Run two more searches, just in case.” Charles replied, before looking at Scarlet. “How are those wards coming?”

“High level wards take time. Give her a minute. It would normally take a dozen casters to do this.” Branwen responded in annoyance as Scarlet glowed with highly dense magic energy.

“Sorry. It just makes me uneasy.” Charles said, looking back to the pile. 

The real thing that made the gold so deadly, even to men as powerful as the Big Ten, was not the mimics or the weight of false coins, it was the curses that clung to many of the supposed treasures. 

Singular curses could weaken and even kill low level individuals, but thousands of curses could bring down even the greatest of men, and the curses on some Labyrinth treasures were leagues about what could be cast by any man currently alive. Curses that would require someone with more than 150 levels in cursed magic and grand rituals in order to cast.

Simply standing within close proximity to the vessel could trigger the curse, and even the fake treasures could carry horrible curses.

If given the choice between facing down a fully evolved dragon and walking straight through that Treasure Room, Charles would take his chances with the dragon.

So it wasn’t until Scarlet was finished with her spells and a blanket of golden light settled on every visible surface in the room. With the wards in place, the false products were cut off from the surrounding mana supply and started to fall apart, turning into a formless slug and leaving only the true treasures behind… both cursed and otherwise.

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A room full of tens of thousands of items was reduced to just fifty.

“How long do we have?” Charles asked.

“The wards will keep whatever magical effects the items might have at bay for around five hours or so.” Scarlet reported.

“Five hours… right.” Charles nodded his head in confirmation. “How many Scrolls of Greater Identification do we have?”

“Just five.” Nico replied to the young lord’s question.

Scrolls of Greater Identification were single use items which could be used to perform an identification ritual, allowing the user to grasp truths about the target that were even beyond their frame of understanding.

They were commonly used by the Church to check for demonic influence, but people exploring Labyrinths also carried them in case they came across a poison or curse and needed to know the exact nature of it in an emergency, things that even Scarlet’s sight wouldn’t be able to identify simply because of her lack of inside knowledge.

The things were hard to produce and regulated by the government, so even money couldn’t buy a massive surplus of them.

“Five huh… I want to keep two in reserve for emergencies. So we will pick three items and check them for curses. Everything else we leave untouched.” Charles said, looking over the items that remained in one piece, wondering which they should pick.

“Feels wasteful to leave them, but I suppose that is the best we can do.” Lloyd nodded his agreement.

Sam nodded as well, though unlike those born into nobility, she seemed more uncomfortable about it. While they weren’t deep into Labyrinth, some of those items were likely to be Tier 5 Magic Items, or even Magic Weapons. Something worth a thousand gold. As much as her father’s entire mercenary company used to make in a year of risking their lives.

Even to Nobles, it was a lot of money. To commoners it was mind boggling. Though she did understand the necessity to leave them behind, same as everyone else.

But there was one person who wasn’t quite so ready to give up. 

“That’s okay! I can set up a ritual to do the Greater Identification spell on everything myself!” Scarlet said proudly.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Charles shouted, loud enough for the girl in question to flinch. “Have you forgotten how Archbishop Joshua forbade you from continuing to train your [Divination Magic]? And you wish to perform a solo Grand Ritual with it?”

“Ah… well… Doing just a little couldn’t hurt, right?” Scarlet said, fidgeting underneath the boy’s look of disapproval. 

“...How many?” Charles said after a moment’s pause, causing Scarlet to poke up.

“Just a few. I think I could get multiple items in the same…”

“How many levels of [Divination Magic] have you grown since the incident?” 

“...N…Not that many.” Scarlet mumbled, but the way she averted her eyes told them all that she was not exactly being honest. She was a terrible liar.

In truth, she had grown quite a few levels in [Divination Magic] through identifying various things in the , going from level 133 to level 140.

In fact, what interested her the most wasn’t the magic items, it was the curses.

Her [Curse Magic], which made up one half of [Divination Magic], had remained a low rank, due to the inconvenience of it. Casting curses was generally speaking a bad thing, so she didn’t do it, resulting in the skill never surpassing level 1. But the removal of curses was also a part of [Curse Magic], so she would be able to grind easy levels by removing the curses on the objects.

…Not that she could tell Charles that. After the incident with her near possession, Joshua had told them not to let Scarlet use more [Divination Magic] then was absolutely necessary. Of course, Scarlet needed to level up [Divination Magic] for the sake of future Class Changes, but that wasn’t something easy to argue with the overly protective males.

“Wait, how does Scarlet know [Divination Magic]? I thought its practice was illegal?” Sam asked, confused by the girl’s volunteering to cast the magic herself.

“It’s not illegal… just highly regulated.” Scarlet said in her defense.

“Meaning that it is illegal to use it unwisely, and for good reason.” Nico said in his scolding voice, clearly angry that Scarlet seemed to have been practicing the magic behind their backs. “I can’t believe that you are still practicing it after what happened at the Class Selection, and the Archbishop’s warnings.” 

“Why? Because I might die? Guess what. Every time we come down here into this Labyrinth, there is the real possibility that we might die. Statistically speaking, you’d expect at least one person in this group to die before they turn 20.” Scarlet said. “Does [Divination Magic] have its risks? Yes. But life is all about risks. Information is the method used to minimize risk and [Divination Magic] is the best method for getting a hold of that information.”

“You’re just trying to justify your use of it.” Charles said bitterly, indicating that she had a point.

“Just because it is a self-justification, doesn’t mean I’m not right.” Scarlet countered.

“I’m not going to argue this with you. If you are talking about risk and reward, we don’t need these items. They aren’t worth the risk.” Charles said with a shake of his head. 

“...Fine.” Scarlet mumbled, biting her lip behind her gasmask.

“I am so confused.” Chad said, looking back and forth between them, not knowing anything about [Divination Magic] or its dangers.

To change the subject, Charles told them to look over the remaining items and pick out three that they thought looked useful.

In the end, two of the three items that they grabbed were cursed and had to be dumped. One was a sword that could not be dropped and would slowly drain the life out of the one holding it, while the second was a horn that would produce a wondrous song when blown that would shock monsters, but would freeze the lungs of whoever blew into it.

The final item, and the one that wasn’t cursed, was a mirror that Scarlet had picked, hoping it would have some kind of Divination effect. As it turned out, it was a mirror that could apply makeup to the face of whoever looked into it, in whatever way they wanted.

Fucking useless!

…Well, maybe it would make a nice gift. She wondered if Caesia would like it. 

The thought made Scarlet uncomfortable, and made her question why her mind skipped to such a thing in the first place. Seriously, they aren’t even old enough to be wearing makeup yet, and Caesia didn’t even need it anyways. She was naturally… um…

Scarlet was glad when Charles told them that it was time to move off.

Scarlet looked back at their first ever Treasure Room, more than a bit disappointed, before returning to her duties. They only had a few more hours before they would need to start heading back towards the surface due to Chad’s magic classes.

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