Chapter 18: Ashborn Treasury.

Chapter 18: Ashborn Treasury. ’A handsome man stood in front of a grand-looking door.’ ’His eyes were tired. Tired of waiting. Tired of the door refusing to open as if it had some ancient blood feud with him.’ ’And of course, the final boss guarding that door?’ ’An old man with grey eyes and a scalp that had long declared war on hair, pecking at a digital screen like he was entering a nuclear launch code.’ If I were being poetic, this was exactly how I would have written myself. But the truth? That geezer had been typing the same long-ass password for ten minutes straight. I was so fucking bored. That I started describing my own life in a third POV just to pass the time. And honestly? It was kind of fun. Not that I had a choice. If literally anyone else besides that ancient geezer was here, I might’ve had someone to talk to. But nope. No one. We were inside the Ashborn Family Treasury. Just me and the Elder in charge, since no one else could get in without a mountain of permissions. Even I had restrictions and couldn’t even bring my Aether Link in here. Tch. A day had passed since my little "negotiation" with Seles. Now, I was on to better things—like getting myself a nice shiny artifact or maybe a flashy skill. Something useful and cool. So I asked my father. And instead of just handing it to me like a normal rich dad, he gave me a scroll with a seal and told me to fetch it myself... from the treasury. Which is how I ended up here, stuck with an old man who types slower than the process of evolution. Swiisshhh! The door finally opened, releasing a soft burst of white steam like it was guarding some ancient secret. About damn time. I tried to peek into the treasury. But before I could even get a proper look, the geezer stepped in front of me like some final boss NPC. "Ahem. Young Master, you may select any one skill below the rank of B," he said, voice dripping with fake wisdom as if he was the guardian of the Holy Grail or something. Tch. But I knew this wasn’t because he was stingy. There was a reason for the limitation. Skills weren’t things you could just learn from a scroll or buy at a magic Walmart. They were rare—obtained as rewards from dungeons and towers. And even among those, the usable ones were few and far between. Still, rarity wasn’t the real problem. The real reason was simple: a person could only absorb one skill at a time. You had to refine and merge it with your core before taking in another. The higher the skill is ranked the more time it takes to do that. Of course, this didn’t apply to Nexus Skills. That was a different system altogether. And before you ask—no, I couldn’t just hoard a bunch of them, store them in my storage ring and use them one after another later. Because skills didn’t exist in tidy little books here. They came in the form of Mana Orbs—fragile things that couldn’t even be stored in a Storage Ring for more than 48 hours. After that? Poof. They’d dissolve and merge with the ambient mana like they never existed. The only way to store them longer was with a Mana Resonator like the one present in Ashborn Treasury. But those things were insanely expensive to maintain. They burned through countless high-grade monster cores just to stay active for a single day. Artifacts, however, were a different story. They still needed to be refined before use but unlike Skill Orbs, they didn’t vanish if left alone. You could store them in Storage Rings without a problem. That said, there was a catch. You couldn’t refine an artifact more than three ranks higher than your current one. And even if you could... it wasn’t worth it. The mana consumption for higher-rank artifacts was absurd. Same went for skills. So yeah, choosing wisely wasn’t just smart. It was survival. I glanced at the old man, waiting for my answer. "...Yeah. Sure," I said, giving a casual nod like it was no big deal. "One last thing, Young Master," the old man added. "You must complete the selection in half an hour. Any longer and the risk of Mana Poisoning increases." I nodded again. "Okay." I knew what Mana Poisoning was. It was what happened when your body got exposed to raw, unrefined mana for too long. The weaker your core, the faster it hits. Not that I was planning to overstay my welcome. Half an hour was more than enough to grab a decent skill and artifact. Right? The old geezer finally stepped aside. "You may enter now, Young Master," I didn’t bother replying. I just walked in without any hesitation. _ As soon as I stepped through the door, a blinding light erupted. I instinctively closed my eyes. When I opened them again... I was somewhere else entirely. The Ashborn Treasury. I turned around, expecting to see the massive entrance door behind me. But it wasn’t there. Instead, there was only a small, unimpressive door. That was the node point. A spatial anchor that connected directly to the main estate. No one, except the patriarch, actually knew where the real vault was located. Probably buried under a mountain or floating in some pocket dimension. The door that old geezer opened? That was the only link between the Treasury and the Ashborn estate. I looked back at the treasury as the grand sight greeted me. It wasn’t just grand—it was overwhelming. And trust me I wasn’t even exaggerating. I could see countless Skill Orbs floating inside some blue glass chambers. Each one connected to a massive Mana Resonator in the centre. The artifacts were displayed in a similar fashion. I tried to look at the floors above. ... But I saw nothing. Just a dense fog of mana covered it. Probably a rank restriction. But I didn’t have time to care about that. I only had half an hour. Still... as I took in the sight of the treasury again, one thought crossed my mind: Fucking hell. How the hell am I supposed to find anything good within half an hour? ___ Author Note: Hey guys! Just a heads-up—I made a slight change to the explanation of power system in the Auxiliary Volume. [Just deleted previous explanation about Skills and Artifacts] But don’t worry—this Chapter pretty much covers everything you need to know anyway. Hope you’re enjoying the ride so far! ????