After several minutes of silent searching, Damien’s efforts were finally rewarded.
Beneath a false slab of stone flooring, he discovered a concealed chamber. The mont he pried it open, a cool rush of stale air greeted him—air that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades, maybe centuries.
Inside the hidden vault were a series of large, iron-forged boxes, their surfaces etched with faint elental sigils and sealed tightly with complex locking chanisms.
Each box radiated a faint chill—crafted with precision from Cold Frost Iron, a rare mineral found only in the ancient open-pit mines of Dreamy Sky City.
Damien’s eyes glead with satisfaction.
Without a second thought, he summoned Epoch Breaker into his hands, the smooth, black barrel of the gun pulsing slightly as if responding to his intent.
One by one, he cleaved open the boxes, the sharp clang of ruptured locks echoing in the chamber like distant thunder.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Essence after essence revealed themselves in full glory.
Flas danced within the confines of most boxes—raw, fiery energy swirling violently inside crimson-hued crystals. They pulsed like tiny hearts of a volcano, radiating heat even through their containnt.
But as Damien opened box after box, a frown slowly began to form on his face.
Fourteen.
Fourteen out of the sixteen boxes were filled to the brim with Fire Essence.
He grimaced.
Useless—for now.
What he truly needed was Ti Essence.
That was the key to advancing further, the missing piece he’d been chasing all this ti.
Still, two unopened boxes remained.
His pulse quickened, and his fingers subconsciously tightened around Epoch Breaker’s hilt.
A hint of anticipation flickered in his chest.
Stepping up to the fifteenth box, Damien summoned a dense orb of compressed mana at his fingertips and struck.
Boom!
The lid blasted open—and what he saw inside was... not what he expected.
He stared, unmoving.
"...What is this?"
There were no crystals, no essence fragnts, no elental cores.
Instead, inside the cold tal chest was a stack of notebooks, carefully arranged and wrapped in thick protective cloth.
The pages were yellowed with age, but ticulously preserved.
Brows furrowed, Damien reached in and picked one up.
The cover was plain—weathered leather, with ink faded in parts—but the title was clear:
"Most Effective Ways to Refine Frost Iron."
His eyes narrowed.
This wasn’t what he ca for... but it wasn’t worthless either.
Flipping through the pages, Damien found dense technical diagrams, strange terms, heat treatnt thods, layering sequences, and mineral tempering charts.
A millennium’s worth of tallurgical research compressed into crude hand-written form.
He quickly skimd through a few pages, but the terminology was foreign—deeply specialized and arcane. Far beyond his current understanding.
"Tch," Damien clicked his tongue and shut the book.
Still, even if he couldn’t understand it now, soone else could. Knowledge like this—about a material as rare as Frost Iron—was priceless to the right buyer.
He carefully set the notebook aside and leaned forward, peering deeper into the box to see if there was anything else.
He wasn’t done.
There was still one final box left.
And if luck was on his side...
This ti, it wouldn’t be fire.
Indeed, after a couple more tries—tapping into subtle energy fluctuations and relying on his instincts—Damien finally unearthed sothing different.
From beneath a false bottom within the final hidden compartnt, he retrieved a small, tightly sealed cylinder carved from bone-like stone. It was unassuming in appearance, worn smooth with ti, but it radiated a strange, oppressive aura.
He popped the latch, and inside, carefully rolled and protected by ancient silk, was a scroll—old beyond reckoning.
The mont his fingers brushed against it, a sudden chill surged through his entire body, sinking into his bones like spectral frost. His heartbeat stuttered. Every survival instinct in his body scread.
An overwhelming sense of danger gripped his heart.
Damien’s breath caught in his throat.
"...Hmm, interesting," he muttered, the corners of his lips curling upward in fascination rather than fear. His eyes glead, not with hesitation—but with excitent.
He unfurled the scroll slowly, its surface brittle, yet protected by a faint sheen of natural energy. The ink on the parchnt shifted before his eyes—alien symbols rearranging themselves as though reacting to his presence.
He frowned.
He couldn’t read it.
The language was foreign, every word incomprehensible... and yet, hauntingly familiar, as if he had once seen it carved into ancient ruins in a forgotten dream.
Just as he was about to roll the scroll back and tuck it away, his eyes locked onto a single phrase at the bottom of the parchnt.
Clear. Understandable.
"Key ingredients: 1000 fire essence crystals..."
His pupils dilated slightly.
"A recipe?"
He narrowed his eyes, brows furrowed in thought. His fingers tightened around the edges of the scroll.
If the Dreamy Sky family had sacrificed nearly their entire elental reserve for this, then whatever this was—it wasn’t ordinary. It might even be sothing dangerous, or worse, forbidden.
Their fire essence had been hoarded not for defense, not for war—but to create sothing.
Sothing big.
Damien’s lips curled with a cold smirk.
"Looks like I’ll be testing you soon."
Without wasting another second, he carefully rolled up the scroll and tucked it securely into his back pocket.
Then his gaze shifted toward the final unopened box.
His heartbeat quickened.
"Please..." he whispered internally, his expression hardening with desperate hope. "Just one... give at least one ti essence crystal."
He stepped forward, each footfall echoing across the now-emptied treasury chamber. His palm hovered over the final lid, breath shallow.
With a pulse of compressed mana—Boom!
The seal broke, and the box creaked open.
Fwoosh!
A radiant silver light burst outward, nearly blinding him. His hand instinctively shielded his eyes as wave after wave of dense temporal energy washed over him like ripples through a still pond.
He opened his eyes slowly, adjusting to the light.
Inside the box lay a bed of shimring, crystalline shards—each one glowing with soft silver hues, gently pulsing with the rhythm of an unseen clock.
Ti Essence Crystals.
His face lit up with a rare look of genuine joy.
"Finally..." he whispered, awestruck. "Finally found it."
---
Outside the ancient treasury, just beyond the stone-etched doors, Fatty and the hawk-eyed man stood like nervous statues.
Around them, the air was tense.
The wide hall had filled with soldiers—elite warriors clad in deep-blue armor, their insignias marked with the crest of the Valthorn Kingdom.
All of them bore the emblem of the Blue Hamr Division.
Their presence exuded control, readiness, and ruthless authority.
The hawk-eyed man wiped the sweat forming on his brow, while Fatty nervously adjusted his collar.
Neither of them dared to speak.
They didn’t need to.
Everyone was waiting.
And whatever Damien found inside that vault...
It was bound to shift the tide of power.
"How ruthless."
With just a glance beyond the shattered stone gates, the hawk-eyed man imdiately understood the carnage that had unfolded outside the city walls. His sharp instincts, honed through years of cautious maneuvering, pieced the puzzle together with ease.
Slaughter. Pure and absolute.
Not a single corpse remained untouched. The ground still stead with the echoes of power.
Beside him, Fatty—though not as quick-witted—felt the air grow heavy with dread. It took him a few seconds longer to register the grim truth, but when he did, his entire body shivered.
He sucked in a breath of cold air, his eyes wide with horror and awe.
His heart pounded like a war drum, but this ti it wasn’t fear—it was relief.
Grateful relief.
He was alive. He had submitted. He had made the right choice.
That man... Damien... was not soone you could cross and live to tell the tale. He was an executioner wrapped in the flesh of a warrior, cloaked in quiet fury.
If Fatty had hesitated even a mont longer back then—
He shivered again.
He would’ve died. No question.
Then—
BOOM!
The entire ground beneath them quaked violently, accompanied by a deep, thunderous roar that seed to shake the heavens themselves.
It was as if the sky had been torn apart by divine wrath.
Fatty let out a frightened yelp and dropped flat on the ground, his body trembling from the sheer force of the explosion. Dust rained from the ceiling. Stones cracked. Mana rippled like a tidal wave.
But the hawk-eyed man... he wasn’t afraid.
Instead, his lips curled upward—slowly, confidently.
His eyes glead.
He’s finally here!
His mind was practically screaming with joy, like a child who had spotted a beacon of light in a sea of darkness.
That voice...
That overwhelming pressure...
There was no doubt.
The savior he’d been waiting for had arrived.
And as if fate itself conspired to confirm it, a divine voice bood from the distance—majestic and absolute, filled with righteous fury.
"Rats of Valthorn, co outside to accept death!"
The words thundered through the air like a divine edict, echoing three tis, as if Heaven itself wished for no one to miss the ssage.
The voice carried no uncertainty, no arrogance. Only the undeniable weight of authority.
The hawk-eyed man’s heart surged with reverence.
"It is indeed him!" he exclaid, barely restraining himself from breaking into a full dance. His fists clenched with delight. "It’s really him!"
The ssiah of Dreamy Sky had returned.
The atmosphere shifted sharply.
Inside the treasury hall, every Valthorn soldier stiffened at once. Faces paled, breaths quickened.
Their expressions were no longer casual.
They were grim. Alert. Furious.
For them, Damien had beco more than a leader—he was a symbol of pride and dread. A person who had forced their respect not through titles, but through overwhelming power and undeniable presence.
So hearing that voice—brazenly daring to insult soone so mighty...
Calling him a rat?
Unforgivable.
Several soldiers imdiately gripped their weapons and surged forward, their blood boiling.
"I’ll tear his mouth apart!"
"Who dares insult Lord Damien?!"
So prepared to rush out of the treasury gate, their bodies fueled by instinct and blind loyalty.
But a cold hand from their commander stopped them.
"Wait."
His voice was calm but iron-like.
"Don’t disgrace him with blind action. Let the storm co—and see who survives it."
Outside, the winds scread across Dreamy Sky City’s shattered walls, and purple lightning danced along the heavens like serpents of wrath.
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