The Guild Vault

Our time had passed and we needed to get back so bid farewell and I was offered to come for dinner later that night. I told them I would see if I could and we left.

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Our journey back was uneventful, and most of it was filled with pointless chatter while we ran back to the school.

Upon arrival at the Guild I brought Lyric up to my room. Emmy was on her bed reading a book while Caroline seemed to be sleeping on her bed.

" Alice, I feel awkward being here." Lyric said as he looked around the room.

The dorms were split into two sides one for the girls and one for the boys. The Guildmaster's office has two stairways that go on either side of it that lead to the different sections. The one on the left was for girls and right was for boys. I'm not sure if their was a rule about boys and girls not entering the other sections and I haven't seen a boy on this side ever, but I'm sure it will be fine ... Probably.

" Why did you bring me here anyways?" Lyric finally asked and started to look around a bit.

". . ." Now that I thought about it I had no reason whatsoever to have brought him along.

" No clue, don't remember" I say while trying to remember if their was a reason in the first place.

This got a laugh out of Emmy, and Lyric seemed to trip on nothing falling on the floor disrupting my thoughts and making Emmy laugh harder.

" What's all the racket about, I want some sleep" Caroline said as she was getting up out of her bed, seems like we woke her up.

She got off her bed and looked to the floor where Lyric was still laying for one reason or another. " Well hello, I see you like the floor as much as I do. I'm glad you see it's glory, fellow comrade." Caroline said in a semi-deep yet tired voice, like she was trying to make a joke but was too tired to put much effort into it. I started laughing as I remembered how I first met her, the night of the festival, and Emmy almost stopped breathing.

As Caroline and I were ensuring Emmy didn't die from suffocation by laughter, Lyric got up off the floor,

" I'm going to leave." and went to walk out the door.

"Bye Lyric." Emmy, Caroline and I said unanimously as he walked out the door.

We then went on to do our own things, I was bored and so I started playing with my system a bit, Emmy continued reading and Caroline decided to lay on the floor beside her bed.

As I was looking at my System, I realized I had yet to claim the reward for the competition. I was about to do so when I was interrupted.

~Knock~

~Knock~

~Knock~

" Alice, Caroline, Emmavailya, please come down to my office immediately, Thank you"

The muffled voice of the Guildmaster called from the other side of the door way.

Emmy got up and shook Caroline awake and I watched as Caroline, who was only on the floor for five minutes was awoken by Emmy.

After Caroline woke which didn't take too long because she wasn't in that deep a sleep, we head down to the Guildmaster's office.

In his office were the Me, Emmy, Caroline and all the others my age, Jacklyn, Grant, Blake, and a collection of other people who seemed to be a bit older than my group, most likely the winners of the other competitions.

We waited for a couple moments longer and a collection of twenty nine children gathered in the room, it was starting to get cramped a bit. The Guildmaster had a big office but there were a lot of us.

The Guildmaster walked into the room and worked his way through the crowd to a bookshelf. He put his hand on the bookshelf, that seemed the be covered in dull, translucent magic circles, and whispered something I didn't understand. Then a few of the magic circles lit up and the bookshelf moved aside opening the way to a stairwell that went fairly deep into the ground. The entrance at the bottom led to a corridor that was wide enough for all of us to fit shoulder to shoulder and even longer than that.

At the end of the corridor was a large wooden door that once again had the unusual magic circles that seemed to be engraved onto the door. The Guildmaster said his weird code that I was unable to understand, and the large doors opened to reveal a musky, dim lit room cluttered and covered in almost anything you could think of, bags and bottles, weapons and accessories, shelves and storage spaces of all kind were covered and filled with random objects and their were narrow pathways that lead throughout it. Their seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the order of objects or their placements and the room itself seemed to get darker the further you go in.

" You are allowed to take whatever you find here for your item or items of choice. you all may find vials and small bags in the room, they are counted as one item as long as you don't open them." The Guildmaster said.

The Guildmaster then listed off everyone's name and the number of items they could pick from the room, I was allowed six items. After he finished we all went into the room to pick our items. The room was huge and past the first section of shelves things started to clear up a bit so it wasn't so packed, but it was still cluttered. I started to wander and see if anything caught my eye.

The room was dark, but luckily I had night vision. It was like wearing sunglasses inside a lit room, just you could tell your surroundings were much darker from the corner of your eyes not lighter. Their were occasionally things that glowed amongst the items. I even saw a neon blue glowing mushroom on one of the shelves. "Wonder how has that not rotten by now"

I wandered the room more until I felt my vision tugged to a self in the corner. Like a shiny rock or coin, a small object that you barely see that pulls your attention, it drew me in. Moving things out of the way I found a red stone about the size of my fist. It had a soft glow to it and it made me warm inside when I held it. moving it to my pocket I decide to look for other things in the area.

' Alice that' Oreo said and moved hopped off my head and started pawing at a ball of yarn and it started to roll across the floor. 'Wow this is fun!'

" Sigh, alright you'll get the yarn" I say, pick the ball of yarn up, and held Oreo in one arm. I went to place the ball of yarn in a bag I had been given at the start, but dropped it and it rolled away from me and under a shelf that was like a bookshelf and was full of things.

I bent down and tried to grab it from under the shelf. My arms were barely too short so I couldn't reach it. I moved some of the things on the bottomed shelf and tried again, pressing my face against the wooden bottom and fully extending my arm, but I just pushed it further from me. I tried to stand up and find another way to get it out, but I hit the back of my head on one of the lower boards, having not backed up far enough and fell on my butt clutching the back of my throbbing head. The impact shook the shelf and something from the top shelf fell on my head and bounced into my lap, probably adding another bruise onto my head.

I hold up the item in my lap as Oreo rolled the yarn out from under the shelf, it was a black bag that was relatively small. I decided to take it with me. I pick up the black bag and yarn and continue to wander around.

I continue to walk and find an area that seemed to be filled with weapons. Spears, swords, shields and even less conventional weapons like chains and metal fans, were all over shelves and stands along with spare metals and the such. A black metal stood out the most to me. It was actually a massive shield that was even taller than me, and was a vibrant black. It was twisted, slashed, and warped to the point you could barely call it more than scrap metal, and was so torn apart it would probably scratch you if you tried to grab it, but it seemed interesting. The shield, though torn to shreds seemed valuable to me, and I couldn't understand why, it made no logical sense, I doubt I would ever have a use for it, but I decided to trust my instincts because, why not.

I decided that I would grab the shield somehow after I found my last items so I wandered around the immediate area. In my wandering I found a bag that

practically radiated a rainbow, so of course, I took it. The last thing I found a massive, majestic, fluffy, feather that was blue and purple and gave a slight shock when you first touch it. It drew my attention like the red stone from before, and I thought it was pretty. I had nothing I really wanted, so I wouldn't be picky right now.

I was careful with everything I wanted to grab. The two bags, red stone and yarn ball had all been placed in a simple satchel that had been given to each of us to place our item or items in so we didn't have to awkwardly carry them as most the people had more than one item to take. For the feather, I lightly bit down on the back of base of the feather because I didn't want to ruin its fluffiness in the bag, and I didn't have any other way to carry a feather the length of my arm.

I return to the shield and found it was really heavy I could move it but only barely. I was going to have to drag it. Luckily my hands were small enough I could find some small places to put my hands and not cut myself too bad.

I started to drag the shield and it made a awful sound as it scratched along the floor and I flinched when I heard it. I try to think of another way to bring it along but any other way I could think of would result in be being turned into a pin cushion by splintered metal. I grit my teeth and continue pulling until I stop realizing I'm not quite sure where I as going, so I retraced my steps, only to realize I was going in the wrong way entirely. Though I was just going the way I came, I had somehow gotten turned around.

I continued to pull the metallic disaster, until I began regretting picking it in the first place. I was too far to go back now, so I kept it up until I reached the overly packed front. I got to the front and spent a while moving things out of my way so I could drag this massive metal chunk. People in the front even started helping after they realized that I wasn't going to abandon it, apparently they had been waiting for me for a while, and to be fair I was pretty far in.

" It appears that we have all arrived in one piece, let us leave then." The Guildmaster said and we went to leave.

One person couldn't leave the doors however. He walked into an invisible wall when he tried to exit. The Guildmaster walked over to the kid and told him to show him everything that was taken from the Vault. He had a bag and a sword.

" Name please?" the Guildmaster asked " Louis Redd"

Turns out he tried to take more items than he was allowed, so he was forced to leave everything back and wasn't allowed back inside.

" Now everyone learn from Mr Redd and don't try to steal, especially from this place" The Guildmaster said looking back at the closed doorway.

We then went up the stairs and on the second step the Guildmaster had had enough watching me haul a price of metal the size of me up the stairs so he helped out. His assistance was greatly appreciated because it was a pain to move, I'd probably be sore later.

The Guildmaster managed to lift the metal mass with one hand seeming like it didn't bother him in the slightest. We got back to the Guildmaster's room and he told us we could have our items identified at the guild shop. Everyone left and I stayed to figure out what to do with the price of metal. I could put it in my inventory and it may work out, but I was wary about doing it front of people. I know magic exists so I could probably BS my way through questions with that but I would rather do it in private.

The Guildmaster told me he would keep the the metal in his office because it was easier than trying to store it on the eighth floor of the building, and I decided to ask him if he could bring it to my room as I had a way to manage it from there. He looked skeptical at first but he relented with a sigh after a small time of awkward silence.

" Thank you" I said as I left the room out of the corner of my eye I just saw him slightly shake his head.

I followed after the others and went to the guild shop. It was in an room through the right corridor of the Guild. The corridor lead to an area with a couple tables to dissect monsters and a counter that covered the entire left hand wall. It had places to sell monster parts, buy certain goods that are sold to the guild or made by the school.

I arrived and people were having their things checked by an attendant with a mysterious stone, though I missed the first few items.