Chapter 338: The Treasury of Giants

The sensation of being crushed by the dark, mechanical geometry of the monolith vanished as abruptly as it had arrived, replaced by the jarring feeling of solid stone beneath Sage’s boots.

He blinked, the darkness of the cube receding to reveal a space so vast and opulent that it felt like an insult to the ruins he had just left behind.

He found himself standing in the center of a cathedral-like hall, a structure of impossible dimensions that defied the logic of subterranean architecture.

The floors were crafted from seamless, white marble that felt warm to the touch, polished to such a high degree that the ceiling, which hovered hundreds of feet above, was perfectly reflected beneath his feet.

Ornate, golden pillars, each thick enough to require a dozen men to encircle them, rose toward the ceiling like frozen giants, their surfaces etched with swirling, bioluminescent runes that cast a soft, rhythmic amber glow across the expanse.

The air was not stagnant or musty, as one would expect from a dungeon; rather, it was crisp, cool, and thick with a concentration of ambient Mana so potent that it felt like breathing in liquid vitality.

The sheer silence of the hall was heavy, pressing down on them with a weight that made every footstep echo like a thunderclap against the pristine marble.

​Sage’s first instinct was not to marvel at the architecture, but to ensure the integrity of his team.

His gaze darted frantically across the white marble, locking onto Valeria, who stood with her blade still half-drawn, her eyes already scanning the perimeter with lethal efficiency.

Near her, Mina was dusting off her skirt, Gregor was checking the edge of his axe, and the rest of the core members were beginning to rise from their crouched, defensive positions.

A heavy, wheezing sigh of relief escaped Sage’s chest as he realized that, by some miracle, they had all been transported together.

"Is everyone alright? Nobody injured?" Sage asked, his voice steadying as he watched his companions nod, their faces pale but intact.

Boren, who had been huddled in a defensive ball, let out a massive, wheezing exhale, his rotund frame shaking as he patted his chest, his double chin wobbling with the force of his relief.

"By the gods, we’re breathing," Boren gasped, a frantic grin spreading across his face. "Since we’re alive, that means Father must have made it through as well. He wouldn’t let something like this keep him down."

Brutus, standing a few feet away, let out a hollow, self-deprecating laugh as he scratched the back of his head, his hand trembling slightly.

"Damn, I thought we were done for, honestly. I almost lost my dignity and wet myself back there," he joked, though the tension in his shoulders suggested he was far from actually feeling relaxed.

​Just as the group began to exchange low-voiced murmurs of survival, a sudden, strangled scream ripped through the quiet air, drawing every eye toward Boren.

Boren was frozen dead in his tracks, his head craned back at a precarious angle as he stared toward the impossibly high ceiling.

Sage frowned, his hand instinctively tightening around the hilt of his staff as he pivoted to see what had stolen the man’s voice.

"Boren? What is it? What do you see?" Sage demanded, but the words died in his throat the moment his own gaze tracked upward.

The silence that followed was absolute, a collective loss of breath that turned the group into statues of disbelief. Gregor, usually the first to charge into danger, felt his jaw drop until it nearly hit his chest, his eyes glazing over as he stared into the heavens of the hall.

"What the... what the fuck?" Gregor finally managed to choke out, his voice cracking with the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the scene.

Even Valeria, who had faced down horrors that would turn a lesser knight’s hair white, stood motionless, her cold, analytical expression shattered into a mask of pure, unbridled shock.

​The visual feast above them was not merely a collection of wealth; it was an oceanic hoard of treasures, locked within thousands of shimmering, translucent bubbles that drifted lazily through the air like schools of bioluminescent fish in a deep-sea trench.

Every single bubble contained a different facet of power, a library of greed that spanned the entire upper atmosphere of the hall. Hills of gold coins, polished until they gleamed like miniature suns, were packed into massive, gravity-defying spheres, while elsewhere, rubies the size of human heads pulsed with a deep, sanguine light.

Massive treasure chests, their iron bands reinforced with enchanted silver, floated in the currents, their lids forced open by the sheer volume of gold bars and rare, shimmering artifacts spilling out of them.

Weapons, swords with blades that hummed with elemental fury, staffs topped with pulsing, world-altering gems, and shields that seemed to drink the very light of the room, danced through the air, their runes cycling in complex sequences of power. In some sections, dense, swirling clouds of pure, condensed Mana were visible, swirling inside their bubbles like liquid mercury, so concentrated that it threatened to crystallize the very air around them.

​The scale of the discovery began to do things to the minds of those present. Mina, stood there with her little cherry mouth slightly agape, her golden eyes dilating until they looked like molten metal, saliva glistening at the corner of her lips as if she were staring at the greatest feast in the history of the world.

"Are... are you guys seeing this for real?" she whispered, her voice a fragile thread of wonder.

Sage, however, was having a significantly more intense internal reaction. His hands, usually steady when calculating the trajectory of a spell or the logistics of a guild raid, were trembling violently at his sides.

He couldn’t stop his eyes from darting from one treasure bubble to another, his pupils constricting and dilating as if he were trying to memorize the entire inventory of a god’s treasury in a single blink.

"I’m rich... I’m damm rich," he muttered, the words barely audible, tumbling over one another in a frantic, obsessive loop. "I’m so damn rich, I don’t even have to dream anymore. This is... this is infinite. This is everything."

His body began to shake, a physical manifestation of the sheer economic power suspended above his head, a wealth that could buy kingdoms, reshape continents, and elevate his guild to a level of dominance that had previously been only a desperate, far-off ambition.

​As Sage continued to scan the dizzying array of riches, his eyes snagged on an entire section of the hoard he had initially overlooked.

Floating among the gold and the artifacts were thousands of crystals, each roughly the size of a human fist, encased within their own protective, shimmering barriers.

Unlike the gold or the weapons, these crystals were not merely static objects; inside each one, faint, flickering images danced like fireflies in a jar, scenes of combat, intricate diagrams of weapon handling, and the flowing, complex geometry of high-level spell casting.

He narrowed his eyes, his professional curiosity battling the overwhelming avarice that had clouded his judgment only moments before. He leaned into the observation, studying the way the light refracted off the facets of the stones and the specific, rhythmic pulses of the images trapped within the crystalline lattice.

The realization hit him with the sudden, violent clarity of a lightning strike, causing his breath to hitch in his throat and his heart to skip a beat.

​His fingers began to twitch against the polished wood of his magic staff, the weapon vibrating in sympathy with his escalating shock.

The staff, which had been his reliable anchor through countless battles and dungeon crawls, felt suddenly heavy and clumsy in his grip, nearly slipping from his numb, trembling fingers as he held it up toward the ceiling.

He pointed with a shaking hand, his arm jerking as if he were aiming at an enemy in the heat of a duel, his voice stuttering and failing to maintain its usual composure.

"Is that..." he began, his voice cracking, the words struggling to emerge from his constricted throat.

"Are those... are those skill stones?"