Chapter 197 Vault-76 (1)

He then looked before he started casting 3rd Level Spells, Void Strikes all around because it was the best thing that he could come up with. As the Void Strikes fell onto the hills and were crushing the rocks and blasting the sand in the air, creating a literal cloud of dust, he soon enough saw something which appeared to be the entrance to the underground, as he jumped in without a second thought after he took down Yvraine from his back and held her in a princess carry.

As they were falling through several tens meters deep tunnel, Samiel started using his Mana to slow down the fall, as they effortlessly landed down in something which appeared to be some kind of entrance to the shelter. The roof was breached by something, but it didn't appear to be done by Arrakian sandworm as the damage was relatively moderate.

It was done by a Professional and judging by the state of the environment here; it has been tens of thousands of years since the last person entered here, probably even entire Epochs. Samiel, still holding Yvraine in a princess carry, walked through the tunnel as he came in front of an enormous vault door made from unknown metal.

"Vault-76, constructed by the Ministry of Internal Security of Korias Empire and Doom-Tex Corporation, Imperial Date of Year 7,974 of Korias Kalendar, 90th Epoch of New Era."

Samiel read the inscriptions that were engraved on the enormous metal vault door as he finally learned how old they were... more than 200,000 years. Time in the Cosmos was counted universally, be it for the Material Plane or the Higher Dimensional Worlds.

Basically, there were two groups, the bigger one was called Era and the smaller one was called Epoch. Each Epoch had 100,000 years while each Era had an unknown number of Epochs. Basically, one Epoch ended when one of 'Them' was born; thus each Era was named in that way.

Chaos Era, basically nobody knows how long lasted; the Primitive Era lasted 81 Epochs, the Akashic Era, lasted 64 Epochs; the Outer Era lasted 197 Epochs; the Faith God Era lasted 145 Epochs; the Abyssal Era lasted for 98 Epochs; Baatorian Era which lasted for 103 Epochs; Immortal Era that lasted for 33 Epochs; Green Era lasted for 75 Epochs; Psion Era for 46 Epoch and right now it was New Era that lasted till now for 92 Epochs.

Samiel then looked at the control panel, which seemed dead as he punched the metal interference, forcing it to come alive. He knew that everything that was here was powered up by the Arrakian Nuclei and thus was running on the Primordial Psionic Energy, one of the things that were essentially immune to the passage of time.

He then put Yvraine down as he looked at the interference that was connected to the metal vault while he used the Level 4 Transcendental Ability Architect to calculate the password... fortunately the person who set the password was not the most creative around because it was 74970679; basically it was a culmination of all numbers engraved on the vault door.

After he instead the code, the humongous metal doors started shaking and opening, while the entire tunnel was shaking a bit because the first time after more than two hundred thousand years, the doors into the Vault-76 were opened by someone.

Samiel then picked up Yvraine and walked in, after which the enormous metal door closed itself. When he entered the vault, he noticed that everything lit up as the place was mostly empty and from the looks, it didn't look like a residential shelter at all, but it rather looked like some kind of shelter directly engineered and built for some high-ranking nobles of the Korias Empire that lived near, judging by the luxurious furniture and the relatively small size of the shelter.

Samiel went through the shelter with Yvraine in his arms; it had one big common room, several other rooms, exactly seven, which all of them were residential and were enormous in size for a single person, luxuriously decorated. He chose the biggest one as he put Yvraine on the king-sized bed because the only thing she needed right now was time to recuperate.

Now he understood why almost nobody came and stayed in the desert of the Sikarra... for those who couldn't bear the heat and scorching sun; it was no different from the death sentence on their person. Practically anyone below Silver-Tier or, better, Gold-Tier couldn't withstand the sun without special protections and sometimes, even with them, it would be no different.

Samiel stayed by her side as he was just browsing through his records on the Akashic Records.

[Name: Samiel Zentaur

Title: Blessed by Outer Court

Age: 31

Race: Old Deus - Eldritch Creature (80%) / Human (20%)

Class: Knight of Niflheim (40%), Grand Necromancer (24%)

Sub-Class: Apostle of Azathoth (Sealed)

Magician Level:

Basic (Void, Necromancy, Winter, Warding)

Intermediate (Void, Necromancy, Winter, Warding)

Mana Quality: Void, Ice, Frost, Outer Holiness

Records Points: 5,640

***

Tier: Bronze

Level: 39

***

Abilities:

Winter Ruler (40%) - Ultimate Ability

Soul Devour (40%) - Ultimate Ability

Architect (4%) - Transcendental Ability

***

Techniques:

Nuclear Void Mana Control Method (21%)

Star Mind Protection Technique (25%) - 3 Stars

***

Magic:

Necromancy Arts (38%)

Void Magic (23%)

Winter Magic (19%)

Warding (14%)

***

Skills:

Undead Creation (50%)

Swordsmanship (14%)

Trident Mastery (20%)

Metamagic - Spell Fusion 4th Level Spells (43%)

Metamagic - Spell Control (21%)

Metamagic - Spell Penetration (20%)

Metamagic - Empower Spell (17%)]

During the one year he only increased his Level only once, as he decided to focus more on refining his techniques and skills, not to mention he was also focusing a lot on his Warding Magic, where he was spending a lot of Coins to buy anything available to the Warding Magic. Fortunately, he still had an enormous horde of Credits from selling the equipment that he plundered from the Avalon Kingdom through the IMC.

Right now, both of his Ultimate Abilities, Winter Ruler and Soul Devour reached a proficiency of 40%; additionally to that, during the past year that he spent on the 9th Floor of the Tower, he managed to raise proficiency in his Metamagic Techniques by some percentage, even though it wasn't a lot, it was still something and better than nothing.

He finally managed to reach the Spell Fusion of the 4th Level Spells of the Metamagic Techniques, which were all growing. Samiel was constantly observing Yvraine during the time she was practicing Level 3 Ultimate Ability Metamagic and through the usage of Level 4 Transcendental Ability Architect, he was able to copy exactly what she was doing.

As he was looking at the Record and contemplating about some things, especially what to practice next, when he heard that Yvraine was waking up as she sat on the bed. She held her head with her right hand because it hurt.

"How are you feeling?"

Samiel asked as he looked at her, only now he noticed that this wasn't just from average fatigue, but something else was in the play... a curse probably, though then he wondered why he wasn't affected... if only it was racially targetted or had effect only specific races.

"Not good... only after we walked for about one hour through the desert I realized that this place is a no-go zone for us elves; I should have known it sooner."

She said angrily as he waited for her to clarify the situation, though he already had some idea of what was going on.

"Elves are a race that is very close to nature and basically higher the evolutionary stage, the closer to nature we are, to the point that the Silvermoon Elven Race could be considered as partial nature spirits. Places like Sikarra are essentially a death sentence to us because it is a place that was long ago like an ideal paradise even to Silvermoon Elf.

However, now, it was transformed into a deathless desert and the anguish of nature is still lingering on the 10th Floor. We can communicate it; I felt its pain, its terror and its hatred towards the worms and towards the humans who released it..."

She didn't even realize it as she started crying as Samiel went to bed and hugged her as she cried on his chest. It wasn't a curse or anything, Yvraine just got connected to the anguished spirit of nature that once ago existed on the 10th Floor, before it became known as Sikarra and felt its hatred and terror and because she was a Silvermoon Elf, the backslash on her was many times worse.

Normal elves would be able to ignore it because while their connection with nature was close, it was not that kind like the Silvermoon Elves had because they were partial nature spirits; for them, just being in this place must be a torturous experience and Yvraine underestimated the situation.

After several minutes that Samiel spent comforting her, or rather he just sat there was there for her because he didn't really know what to do in situations like this. Mainly the lack of experience and also some of the common sense that people usually have, probably... maybe?

"Will you be able to handle it or do you need some help?"

Samiel asked her while Yvraine was right, deeply contemplating about the situation she was in. It was indeed the truth that she severely underestimated the situation, as she predicted that the nature spirit of this place would have already died by now... or was devoured by the Arrakian sandworms, but that was very far from the truth.

"I should have something in my dimensional ring to block up the connection with the nature spirit and if that wouldn't work, I can still ask for the blessing of Goddess Eluria."

She answered after she calmed down a bit, as there were still several ways of how to deal with the situation. What she needed right now was to block the connection that the Silvermoon Elves had with nature, basically making her deaf to the attempts of the Nature Spirit to connect to her so that she wouldn't feel its anguish and pain.

"To turn out the list... where are we? This doesn't appear like the dwelling of some natives."

She said quietly while looking around the luxuriously decorated room where she was laying on a king-sized bed. This didn't seem like the typical dwelling on the 10th Floor of the Tower, which was most commonly just some hut patched up together in a cave.

"We are in one of the doomsday shelters of the Korias Empire that started this shitstorm. I was able to calculate the approximate location of the shelter through a combination of several tens of maps, charts and other information about the Korias Empire before its fall."

Samiel said as her eyes squinted in mild shock that he managed to find something this ancient. While the Korias Empire was never truly a hegemon on the Cosmos scale, but it was still a very powerful Empire that had produced several Holies directly through their breeding of the Arrakian Sandworms.

"You are aware that this is a piece of history... probably a very important one considering that this should be a place exclusively for a high nobility? Did you already go through the place... who knows what is hidden in place?"

Samiel shook his head because he literarily arrived only a short time ago and he only briefly checked the rooms to ensure nothing hostile was there before he put Yvraine in bed and started dabbling in his Record.

"No, I only arrived about an hour ago or so... after you are rested, we can go through the shelter... I noticed that there should be some levels beneath this one, but they are currently sealed."

He noticed that there was at least one underground level beneath the one where they currently were. He deiced that he will take a look only when Yvraine was awake, in case there were some hostile lifeforms... in the Cosmos, there were many things that could easily resist the passage of time and god knows on what the Korias Empire was experimenting and what they locked away.