Chapter 729 - Treasure Hunting
Chapter 729: Treasure Hunting
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
Inside the pitch-black cave, only the sound of my and Harloys’ footsteps and water dripping broke the sound of silence.
*Sizzle!*
I used an alchemical potion to brighten my torch, allowing me to better see my surroundings.
This rough cave evidently wasn’t the proper entrance. I saw nothing but wide space before me.
The cliff above me was actually more than 100 meters tall. A group of silver palaces was at the end of my field of vision. Steps made from silver bricks created a path between the palaces.
Underneath the palaces were small brick houses. However, only broken brick walls now remained.
This ruin probably belonged to some civilization from the past. It was evident that this ruin had been robbed multiple times already. Apart from the stone statues that were too heavy to move, the robbers hadn’t left anything behind. All of the gold and gems on the statues had been cleaned out.
Perhaps the craftsmanship wasn’t high in quality enough, or maybe things here were just too old. The wall drawings were now completely black. Even the sheepskin scrolls had rotted away and were incomprehensible.
“Did we miss yet again?” Harloys’ comment caused my heart to skip a beat. If the magic mirror that I was searching for had really been stolen by a graverobber already, then it would’ve become impossible to find as it could be anywhere in the entire world now.
“…Let’s ask the guardians here first.”
I summoned various undead to walk out of the ruins. Most of them were previous graverobbers. Still, there were a few who were bird-headed members of the Sun God’s old species.
“Undead spirits?”
Seeing these, I actually heaved a sigh of relief. Undead creatures of all sorts were quite common in these types of ruins.
Looking around, most of these undead were skeleton types. There were low-level skeleton soldiers (commoners), skeleton archers, and skeleton laborers. Even the highest level were only a few skeleton mages. There were no liches among them.
The fact that these undead still existed here was evidence that these ruins hadn’t been cleaned out completely yet. There were probably still valuables inside.
Even if there were high-level undead here, it was likely that they wouldn’t have any intelligence. Even mega recluses like liches would still want to go out once in a while. It might be acceptable for a lich to stay underground in a ruin like this for a few centuries, but several millennia or tens of thousands of years would be too much even for a lich.
Many people thought that the older an undead was, the more powerful they were. In a way, this was a mistaken impression.
Indeed, an intelligent undead who had lived for a long period of time usually wouldn’t be weak.
“Tsk, they’re already weathered almost to nothing. I need to be careful not to break them before I draw out their memories.”
The skeleton soldier before me was already losing its negative energy. Its bones were almost fossils. Some other skeletons fell apart before they even reached me. They had no combat strength at all.
It wasn’t that the longer an undead lived, the more powerful it would be. It was actually that only powerful undead would be able to live that long.
A low-level undead with no intelligence that was left alone for too long would see its negative energy begin to dissipate. In normal situations, this undead would gradually become weaker, and even die again. If this area’s negative energy concentration was very high, then it would be possible for new undead spirits to appear from the corpses and bones, but that was something completely different from natural undead.
Only intelligent undead would intentionally gather more negative energy and gradually become stronger, slyer, and more isolated.
The undead creatures before me seemed as if even a light breeze would blow them over. It was likely that they were still intact only because this environment had given them enough protection.
Back in the day, these undead guardians might still have been able to bully some graverobbers who weren’t too powerful. However, these undead were completely meaningless in front of an undead mage like myself.
I used a low-level undead magic spell, and easily took control of these masterless undead.
I directly drew out their memories from their soul shards. I then frowned at what I learned.
“The oldest undead here is less than 1,000 years old. Not only that, it crawled out from all these remnant bones. This place was already a complete ruin by then. After that, this place became even more hidden due to tectonic movements. Since there wasn’t any treasure here to be found, nobody came at all.”
I far preferred to meet with an undead bone dragon blocking my way rather than this current situation… If I had to slowly search through this ruin, just how long was I supposed to look? I might not even find anything in the end.
Yet, I was unwilling to just turn around and leave like this.
“I smell the scent of the living. Who dares to disturb the magnificent Grinka’s rest?”
An angry roar suddenly sounded from the direction of the palaces. This was a soul roar that only high-level undead could use. Judging from the magical wavelength and the fact that it was spoken in the dragon language, apparently it was a bone dragon?
Soon, a ghost dragon flew out from the palaces. However, it was only a tiny dragon that was less than five meters long. It wasn’t even at the standard of an infant dragon, although its voice reached me far before it did.
“My jinxing ability was useful for once…”
Two minutes later, the ghost dragon which had been roaring at me now clutched its head as it submitted to me. I made a “friendly request”, and he “passionately and welcomingly” introduced the situation around this ruin to me.
“I’m looking for a mirror. It’s something shiny. It’s something shiny that can reflect other objects?”
It turned out that this tiny ghost dragon didn’t even know what a mirror was. But thanks to my “friendly assistance”, he soon recalled something.
“I think I saw something like that long ago. But, it was too hard for me to bite into, so I tossed it aside somewhere. I don’t remember where I threw it, but it should be in here somewhere.”
Seeing how stupid this ghost dragon was, I couldn’t even be bothered to get angry.
If I tried to draw out his memories, it wouldn’t be very useful if he even couldn’t remember them clearly. I had no intention of slowly searching through several hundred years’ worth of memories from this stupid ghost dragon.
In that case…
“This dragon is still somewhat useful. At the very least, he provided evidence that the magic mirror is highly sturdy. In that case, everyone, start working. You must find that mirror for me even if you have to dig up this entire place.”
Various skeleton laborers started rising up as they picked up shovels and various weapons left behind here to start treasure digging with.
I was worried that they wouldn’t be enough, so I even summoned a group of my own undead creatures to help with the digging.
As a veteran graverobber… ahem, adventurer, I had indeed searched through other ruins before. I could guarantee you that treasure would never be like in video games, waiting for you in a treasure chest, or dropping if you killed some specific monster.
Anything with a powerful magical reaction that obviously appeared to be something good would typically actually be a cursed item or a trap. Nobody would be dumb enough to carry everything they owned that was valuable with them. It was common that even a low-intelligence monster would know how to disguise its own treasure hoard and set traps.
Without a certain amount of appraisal ability, it would be common to treat a priceless artifact right in front of you as nothing more than scrap metal. I had seen countless novices who treated gold-painted copper swords as treasure before. While there were indeed lucky individuals who managed to find God Equipment in a random store like in the stories, the prerequisite for this was that there was an idiot out there who treated the God Equipment as garbage and sold it off in the first place.
Although 99% of such stories came from merchants trying to scam newbies, there really were a few real examples. Not every adventurer team would have a veteran appraiser with them, after all. If the adventurer team had obtained valuables through improper means, especially if they had robbed the grave of some noble, they would be more than satisfied with being able to safely sell their stolen goods. It was quite common that they would thus sell off their valuables for less than what the valuables were really worth.
“Does this mean that you’ve gotten lucky before? You managed to buy something miraculous at a really cheap price?” Harloys was rather astonished at what I just mentioned.
“No, but I’ve seen others have such luck. For instance, Karwenz two times, and Adam two times…”
I kept feeling more and more like this world was so unfair. Why was it that those with low intelligence always managed to get lucky? I clearly inspected and checked every item I came across, yet I had never been so lucky to find anything good, which was why…
“Back at Sulfur Mountain City, I opened up my own shop. I specialized in selling ‘fenced goods that haven’t been identified’, ‘artifacts picked up in underground tombs’, and so on for 500 silver coins apiece. Business was actually quite good at first.”
“…You could even make long-term profits with such a ridiculous business? You must have arranged for shills who ‘won’ good items.”
“My archaeological counterfeiting abilities are still quite good. I also sold off all of the random rubbish that my System gave me…”
Harloys shook her head as she guessed at what happened next. “So, you must have been exposed, causing your business to collapse?”
“…No. Although I indeed closed down afterwards, it wasn’t because I was exposed.”
“Then what? Did you get bored?”
“…I accidentally missed some God Equipment and really did sell it off for 500 silver coins. I lost so much potential money and cried so much that I couldn’t bear running that business anymore.”
“With your personality, you actually didn’t try to get it back? Oh, I understand. It must have been Adam who purchased the God Equipment from you?”
I nodded with a heavy heart. This was a dark memory of mine. With that one transaction, I had lost more potential money than I would have been able to earn in 10 years. That was why I never ran a store again.
Harloys and I continued to chat in order to pass the timem.
The low-level undead were searching for the magic mirror for me. However, it was unknown when they would be able to actually find it.
“A shard that can reflect light.” “A very sturdy stone.” I gave the low-level undead very rough orders to search for such an object as they were incapable of understanding more complex commands. Skeleton soldiers were beginning to bring strangely shaped rocks to me now. It would seem that this would take a while.
Would this take one year? Or maybe six months? In the end, the God of Fortune must have taken pity on me for once. After enough stones of various shapes were piled in front of me to create a small mountain, slightly less than one week later, a skeleton laborer that was almost falling apart managed to bring me the magic mirror.