Chapter 152 - The Royal Treasury

Chapter 152: 152 - The Royal Treasury

Laurent kept his promise the following morning. Adrien had finished breakfast less than half an hour earlier when a palace attendant arrived to tell him the king was waiting in the eastern wing, and since Amelia had gone to spend the morning with her mother, he followed alone through a part of the castle he had not seen the day before.

Laurent waited beside a broad staircase that descended beneath the oldest section of the palace. Four guards held positions nearby, and before Adrien even reached them Absolute Mana Sense picked up layers of mana woven through the stone around the stairwell.

"Your Majesty."

Laurent gave him a brief nod. "I told you I would keep my promise."

They descended together. The white stone and open windows of the upper palace vanished behind them, replaced by darker walls and old formations carved into the masonry itself. Adrien felt them long before he grasped what each one did, overlapping fields of mana layered so tightly that separating them demanded concentration.

Some reacted to movement. Others ran through floor, walls and ceiling like a second structure hidden inside the first, and one brushed across Adrien’s Core as they passed, then faded.

"Identification?" Adrien asked.

Laurent glanced at him. "You felt it?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Absolute Mana Sense is publicly recorded, but reading active formations that quickly is still unusual."

Adrien kept his attention on the walls and his answer brief. His other talent did not explain every formation to him, for now, though it showed where mana entered, where it travelled and where it was being held. There were enough layers in this corridor that forcing a path through it would have made for a very short career.

The first gate waited at the bottom of the stairs, with two Six-Star guards beside it. Laurent placed one hand against a metal plate built into the wall, and mana ran through the door, checked him, then spread outward before several locks released in sequence.

The second gate required Laurent’s mana again. The third opened only after a guard inserted a crystal key whose formation answered the one inside the door. By the final chamber, Adrien had stopped wondering whether anyone had ever tried to rob the royal treasury and started wondering how far they had got.

The last doors opened without a sound, and Adrien stepped through and slowed his pace without meaning to.

Calling it a treasury barely covered it. The chamber ran farther than Greymoor’s main hall, with further rooms branching away on both sides and raised galleries tracking the walls above. Glass cases, weapon stands and sealed cabinets filled the floor in orderly sections, each guarded by a formation of its own.

"This is the part I can choose from, Your Majesty?"

"This is the part I promised you could choose from."

Adrien let Absolute Mana Sense spread, and the room transformed. Hundreds of separate signatures bloomed around him, some faint and stable, others so dense they announced themselves before he turned to look. Enchantments overlapped with preserved monster materials, old weapons and sealed grimoires until the treasury felt crowded despite its size.

Laurent watched him briefly. "Useful place for your talent."

"Very, Your Majesty."

Adrien walked slowly between the first rows. Grimoires occupied an entire section behind reinforced glass, each marked with rank, affinity and origin, with A-Rank manuals filling several shelves while the smaller S-Rank collection waited behind individual barriers.

Weapons came next. Swords, spears, bows and casting focuses rested on dark stands beneath plaques naming former owners or craftsmen, several of them carried once by members of Sylvamir’s royal family, including a silver bow a prince had borne through a border war almost two centuries earlier.

Beyond them lay armor sets, rings, pendants, bracelets and stranger ornaments. Another room held preserved monster parts in sealed containers: horns, cores, scales, bones and pieces of creatures whose names told Adrien nothing while their mana told him a great deal.

Absolute Mana Sense made the choice harder rather than simpler. A beautiful object counted for little when he could feel that another item three cases away carried a cleaner formation or a steadier flow, and he passed several expensive pieces without slowing because the mana inside them did not suit him.

Then he reached the casting focuses, and one staff halted him outright. It stood alone inside a narrow glass case, almost entirely black apart from thin silver lines running the length of the shaft.

[Starless Meridian]

[Rank: S]

Adrien focused on it and felt the enchantments packed inside. Mana moved through the staff with almost no resistance, gathering near the upper third before dividing through several linked formations, and even without touching it he could tell that casting through it would be faster and cleaner than using Umbral Root.

For a breath the choice looked obvious. Then he pressed deeper, and the internal structure leaned heavily toward Zephyr. Not enough to render other affinities unusable, but enough that every spell outside that alignment would labor against the focus instead of with it. For a Mage who specialized in a single branch, that cost would hardly register. For Adrien, it carried enormous weight.

He thought of Umbral Root waiting in his Inventory. B-Rank, certainly, but neutral, familiar, and built around control and efficient shaping. Vael had already given him the name of Orven Talris, and he still carried material from the Ancient Tree that might let the artificer improve it without stripping away what made it valuable. Taking the S-Rank staff would solve a problem he did not have and create one he certainly would.

Adrien stepped away from the case.

Laurent had noticed his interest. "Not tempted?"

"I was, Your Majesty."

"And?"

Adrien looked once more at the staff. "It’s better than mine, Your Majesty. It just isn’t better for me."

Laurent accepted that without comment, and Adrien carried on deeper into the treasury. He had nearly reached the end of the accessory section when something shifted at the edge of Absolute Mana Sense.

The signature was small enough that he had almost lost it beneath everything else in the room. It held no vast reservoir and no aggressive enchantment, nothing that should have drawn his notice beside S-Rank weapons and royal artifacts, and yet the mana inside it behaved strangely.

Adrien stopped beside an unremarkable case. On the lowest shelf lay a thin silver pendant with a dark stone at its center. He stepped closer, and the mana within the stone shifted with him.

Adrien narrowed his eyes.

’What exactly are you?’