Treasure

After some time of deliberating, she nodded and walked with him out of the room. When they saw another corridor they become disheartened at the thought of what could be in the next room.

But now they saw no carvings on the walls, they were blank with only the occasional lantern.

And so they walked expecting the end to the corridor, but none came. After an hour of walking, they stopped and looked back and forth, they only saw a long corridor with no beginning or end.

"So another trap?" Anna asked.

Hector tried to use his vines to guide him and he thankfully got a response, which led him back.

"It looks like it, we should turn around and go back. If it is what I think that moving forward would be pointless." What he felt from his vines was that space itself was split and walking back would actually mean walking forward, and walking forward would mean walking nowhere.

Normally he would not be able to tell the difference but he could feel the location of those thorny vines that grew from the man's body.

And so after five minutes of walking back, they saw an unfamiliar metallic door. Hector could feel that behind them is what was calling him here.

So he hurriedly walked to the door and started to open them.

When he completely opened the door he could see a decrepit room with an altar in middle and with black gem levitating in middle. The altar was decorated with a crimson red cloth that looked too clean for the room in which it was kept. Under it lay chests filled with golden coins and golden ingots. Walls were overgrown with roots but no glowing flowers grew from them.

When Hector saw the gem he felt as if he would jump from body to it and claim it as his own. Hector was able to stop himself and calm down his emotions.

"Be careful, there could be traps." He heard Anna spoke.

After looking around the room to see if there are any signs of traps or ambush he slowly walked towards the altar. When he stood right before the altar he sighed in relief and stretched his arm towards the gem.

"I don't think you should touch it," Anna warned him as she stood next to him.

Hector fought his desire to take the gem and put his hand back to his side. The next moment they could a clicking sound and then part of the wall started to lower.

The lowering wall created a passage on which end they saw the cellar from which they entered the tomb.

"Finally, we can get out!" Anna yelled and started to run out but then stopped and looked at the gold that littered the ground. Hector could see her eyes glinting from the excitement of freedom and desire for the gold.

He could only smile as he said, "Now that we can get out we can divide our loot. As we don't know if once we get out we can return here."

She smiled as she walked towards the altar. Hector took out beyonder the characteristics of psychiatrist, hunter, and apprentice. Next to them, he put the phantasmal creature that they got from the first room. He also laid down the crown from his head.

She observed him for a little bit and then spoke, "You saved me in the previous room so you should pick two of them first then we can go one by one."

"Well, thank you." He said and took the crown and apprentice characteristics. He was sure she would not take the black gem as she looked at it fearfully.

"Then I will take..." She started to speak but Hector then proposes an idea, "Leave psychiatrist characteristics to me and you can take an equivalent amount from the gold that we will split."

"Ok, I don't know any beyonder gatherings in Buckland so you should also take hunter characteristics." Hector was joyful that he would get them all but then he wondered how is it that she doesn't know any gathering, and how did she get to know about this mission.

"It was proposed by Edwin that I should join you. He approached me in a bar and somehow was able to see that I'm beyonder. When I found out that he was sequence 7 it made sense." She spoke as she knew what he thought.

He nodded in understanding and looked back at the items. She then took the phantasmal creature, Hector had no problem with that as he had no idea what he would do with it, or what it was in the first place.

When they counted the coins and gold Hector could guess that the proximal value of all of it was around 9 000 pounds. Thanks to the previous owner's knowledge he was able to calculate their worth.

He thought about the future and what awaits him. He knew that for the sequence 4 ritual, he will need to create some kind of legend that will lead to people's death. And creating something like that in Buckland would be extremely hard, and so he knew that sooner or later he would go to the sea.

He already planned his future. Once he would achieve sequence 6 Devil he would leave for Gargas Archipelago where he would start a trading company which in truth would be the start of his cult. And for that, he would need ships. And ships need a crew, he thought that Anna would make a good first mate.

He thought of splitting it equally while she would take her half-plus worth of beyonder characteristics, but then he decided that he want to make friendly connections with her as she is from the tyrant pathway so she can be useful in his plans.

Then he split the gold into two parts one with seven thousand pounds and another with two thousand pounds. So she got added bonus of 500 pounds. This is not a lot overall but for ordinary people, it is about the yearly salary of a higher middle-class family. Or one trained dog for nobility.

He gave her a bigger pile and he saw a sparkle in her eye as she took it. Then he looked at the black gem, "Now what we will do with this?"

"I don't want it, whenever I look at it I get weird feelings." She said.

"Well, then I will take it as well." He took a piece of cloth and wrapped the gem with it, he was careful as to not touch it with his bare skin. Even now he felt an overwhelming desire to take it. Then he put it in an iron box and he could feel relief.

Then Anna looked at Hector and spoke, "Now that all other things are dealt with tell me what exactly happened in the previous room."

Hector thought about what to say if he should lie or tell the truth, a more precise version of the truth.

"Firstly you must understand that it is hard for me to talk about it as I too don't exactly know what happened. As you know that man was an extension of the crown. The crown developed living properties and he was the result of it.

"It is a sealed artifact and a strong one at that. It has multiple side effects, however, and one of them is that the crown consumes the soul of the wearer. As you could see with Bella and Walter.

"Same thing would happen to us but I was able to intercept it with those vines you saw and those vines then started to corrupt the crown effectively killing its living properties.

"But it was surprising to me that I was able to resist the crown from consuming my soul. But what happened to that man was unexpected as I have never thought that something like that would happen." It was actually not entirely true as he remembered that when he was being corrupted by Mother Tree of Desires her vines started to grow on him in a similar fashion but he did not know that it would happen so he was speaking the truth.

She was looking into his eyes as he said, "You saved my life and so I now own you one, from where I'm from it means something and so I believe you. And you don't need to tell me why or how you can use those vines."

Sometimes amidst conversation, she took down her mask and so he did the same. Her hair was blue and reached her upper back while being put in a ponytail. Her skin was tanned from long periods under the ocean sky. Her eyes were white and over her left eye, she had a noticeable scar.

When they walked out of the tomb they could hear the wall closing behind them leaving no traces of the tomb's existence.

While the entrance closed Hector could still feel the existence of those vines inside. So he knew that it was still there.

------

While they walked out she said to him, "By the way my actual name is not Anna but Aldith." Hector was not surprised as even he gave a fake name, "My name is Hector. You know, you said that you don't know any beyonder gathering her?"

"Yes, that's right," she said.

"Well, then it is your lucky day." Hector then said her about the gathering led by Eye of Wisdom and how she can get there.

She was overjoyed as it would take a burden of finding one on her own.

"If I may ask, what are your plans here in Buckland?" He asked as he was genuinely curious. He was planning a way to make her his subordinate. When he looked at her he could still feel traces of that mist that tried to corrupt her, and so he could use it if not to control her but to make her more open to service and obedience.

"Ah... it is a long story, but the short version would be that originally I was part of an adventuring group. Well more like treasure hunters. We called ourselves adventures because we would take even missions that had nothing to do with treasure hunting.

"Seas are filled with stories of hidden treasures and they are not wrong, there is much to gain from ancient tombs of nobles, hidden cities that fell to history. But there are many that look for them and so the number of treasures had dwindled after years.

"Now you can find mostly beyonder secrets which are filled with danger far beyond most people. And so we took missions from questionable sources. I could see as our captain was becoming more prone to violence and cruelty. Until there was no difference between us and pirates.

"And so I panned on leaving them but before I could do anything we were hit by real pirates. And as you can guess we sunk. Thanks to me being from the sailor pathway I was able to escape as I have felt no loyalty to those bastards. But they were still my crew, and so one day I plan to return to make them pay.

"I thought about what to do next and in the end decided that it would be good to go to Buckland, the capital of capitals. There should be many beyonder gatherings in which I could raise my sequence before returning to the sea.

"So now here I'm looking for opportunities." When she finished speaking Hector got an idea.