Draco and Eva paid out the money to the broke bitch Water Elf, no longer even willing to mention her name in their heads lest they be infected with her poverty and lowlifeness.
When Draco opened his Inventory to take out the money, he saw plenty of zeroes behind his platinum counter. Forget 3 million, he could have paid out a billion or a trillion to this woman for this item wihtout feeling the pinch.
Then, there were his countless and almost overflowing Aether Crystals. To give you an idea of how many he had, the last time he checked them was about 2.5 to 3 years ago.
The skill allowed him to make 1 crystal every 15 minutes that was always at the top-grade. So if we were to calculate using that, it meant that in at least, 2.5 years, he had produced nearly a 100,000 top-grade Aether Crystals!
That was just him, not counting the ones from Clarent in that same period of time, from Chrona, Clarent's wife, from Hikari and even the newborn Kuro.
A top-Grade Aether Crystal was enough to exchange for a Legendary chest in bulk, and might even swindle away a Divine Chest. That was how precious it was, and Draco had so many of them.
To get this Quest where there was a guaranteed Divine Item in that Vault that they could access easily - relative to only them - they were willing to pay any amount. Genevieve could have gone crazy and asked for 100 Aether Crystals and Draco would have paid.
Alas, her poor horizons and broke bitch mentality had made her fear that asking for 1.5 million might be too much. To even get 3 million, she was seven sneering inside, thinking Draco and Eva were wastrels and did not know how to treasure money.
In fact, just thinking about this broke bitch caused Draco and Eva to feel unwell so they immediately left after acquiring the map, and all promises of further cooperation were tossed to the back of their minds.
In fact, they even left a command to Deployed Soldier and Sublime Notion that if this woman were to ever come to Vita Kingdom claiming anything about cooperation or agreement with them, they should simply kill her on the spot.
After this debacle was over, Draco checked the Deep Vault Map and saw that now the ownership was his, the details had changed. It had now spawned a Unique Quest as well.
「The Vault of the Deeps – Unique Quest
Description: In the Age of Recession, the Great God of the Mortal Seas, Poseidon, was called back to heaven to fight against the now budding Grey Rot. However, he wanted to leave behind some of his weaker items and legacies for the next generation of the various Sea Races. For that, he created the Vault of the Deep using the rarest undersea metals and methods, placing hundreds of Epic, thousands of Legendary, and a few Divine Items there, as well as his True God Legacy and his Supreme Trident. Fulfill his 7 requirements and acquire the Key to the Vault!
Stage 1: Head to the Kingdom of the Undersea and verify your sea race blood at the Altar of Awakening.
Stage 2: Without help from the Kingdom of the Undersea or the royal family, you must hunt 300 Hidden Clams and claim their Bloodline Purifying Pearl.
Stage 3: Use the pearls to condense your bloodline to perfection at the Altar of Awakening.
Stage 4: Travel with the forces and the royal family of the Kingdom of the Undersea to the gate of the Deep Vault.
Stage 5: Pass through the 3 trials and challenges set up within the Deep Vault to test your mentality, power, and bloodline.
Stage 6: Access the Outer Vault and leave the millions of Common to Rare resources for the Kingdom of the Undersea.
Stage 7: Before entering the Deep Vault and claiming all the items, defeat the Kraken.
Note: Certain impositions have been placed on the execution of this quest;
1. The rank of the Player does not affect the Ranks of the enemies. All Enemies will stay at their various Ranks, whether Rank 1 or 7.
2. There is no limit to respawning and retrying any conditions.
3. Anyone can fulfill any of the 7 conditions, but only one of those who fulfill Conditions 1, 3, and 6 can actually open the final vault and use the items inside.
4. All reputations and social factors are negated in the underwater world, which pays no heed to land-related reputations.
5. This Unique Quest is not closed off from the base world, so the player can exit and enter to resume at any time.
6. The reward for the quest completion and for completing any Hidden Quests will be calculated separately from the rewards of the Vault.
7. There is no time limit.
Rewards: 1 Divine Treasure Chest, 10,000,000 platinum, Unique Building: Sea God's Dock.」
Seeing the details on the map, Draco and Eva could understand why Genevieve and all those who had possession of the map before her gave up on the first step.
My brother, this is not the old era, but the new era where everything was much worse, people were poorer and weaker. The sea which used to be equal to land was now a danger zone that could not be crossed.
Just look at how much nonsensical money Umbra and Vita were making just for clearing out one section of the sea between two relatively close continents, allowing inter-sea trade.
Traveling between two continents on the mapped zones was impossible, and most used portals. However, portals were not free to maintain and there was a flat limit of what could pass through in terms of size and essence.
The other method was to fly over using airships or flying mounts. Since only the Merchant Association were the only faction with an Airship from the old era, no one used that route.
Those who could fly over using mounts or their own power either knew a super secret route that was safe or they had the power and energy to maintain it. After all, above the seas were many flying monsters of unpredictable Rank.
You could meet a 100 Rank 1 Seagulls and then suddenly cross paths with a Rank 7 Phoenix. After all, unlike land where the AI divided power zones, it didn't bother to do so for the sea because sea-related content was planned for the future way after the Update 7 that Draco and Eva reached.
That was endgame content. Heck, with the powerhouses of the players having reached Rank 6 and the average player bumbling about at Rank 4 in the previous timeline, they had lacked the qualificaitons to unlock this Update and content, so one could imagine the difficulty.
This was all just a part of why objective 1 was hard. It meant that the Evil Duo were going to have to build or buy a ship, take to the sea up to where the destination was, and then dive underwater to get to the Kingdom of the Undersea.
Not to mention that one had to have a sea race bloodline, this deterred 99% of people from trying this quest. However, there would definitely be fellows like Kronalord or Omegaraider with special powers and abilities that could allow them to traverse the underwater like it was their backyard.
Not to mention they had sea race bloodlines, so they should be fine to do the Quest.
So then, what stopped such fellows from having long taken the spoils before Draco and Eva could even claim their turn?
Well, it was because the location the map pointed to, which was where the Kingdom of the Undersea was... in the goddamned Unmapped Zones!
What the fuck?!
Those were places that even Draco and Eva didn't fully dare to go after reaching 100%. Draco only sent his avatar out to travel in that direction because even if it died, it could be respawned and sent back.
And now, they expected a person of any Rank to just waltz there and head underwater for that matter? Even a Rank 7 Titled God would not easily dare do such a thing, so only one with True God-level power could.
However a True God would disdain such things and besides, they were busy fighting for their dog lives in the Divine Realm. Who had the time to come down here and chase his peer's leftovers?
Not to mention, was Poseidon himself even alive after all this time, or had he been corrupted like Sigurd?
Whatever the case, Draco and Eva knew that no matter the difficulty, they were sure as hell going to partake. The conditions of the Unique Quest made things easier for them and the more people they brought along, the more they could adapt to any changing situation.
Immediately, Draco opened a rift in Space and took Eva back to Vita Kingdom. They headed to the Aether Palace but did not dare to barge into the administrative room, knocking on the door politely first.
When Sublime Notion told them to come in, they gingerly entered and saw that the Lolitician was seated at the desk with her square-rimmed glasses on, pouring through various documents seriously.
She looked up from her work and there was no embarrassment in her eyes, just dissatisfaction.
"Humph, you two beats finally remembered my existence, huh? Besides forcing me to work for you lot, you even continue to send commands through chat without so much as lifting your own finger! Listen, if you don't have anything nice to say and only a new command, SCRAM FOR THIS QUEEN!"
Draco and Eva's faces fell as they stood around awkwardly. After all, they did come here to tell Sublime to gather everyone in preparation for the Unique Quest, but she had directly shut them up.
Sublime snorted arrogantly as she saw that they were tongue-tied. "I knew it, you only see me as a tool! Well, I've had it! This tool is not willing to work so go find someone else!"
Draco and Eva shared a look. They could only apologize to Sublime as Eva's closed her eyes and her aura began to surge. Once Sublime felt that aura, her face changed greatly and she was filled with fear.
"No, how could you be so cruel?! How could you do this to me?!?!"
Draco shamefully looked away as Eva's eyes opened, their former golden color switching back to her traditional pitch black with swirl inside. Her posture became less supreme and full of superiority to filled with danger and lightness.
Most important her usual aloof and benevolent expression became warped, filled with coldness and murder. A black-light directly manifested around her and the energy of light block her facial features from being seen by anyone but Draco.
Riveting Night had awoken.
Riveting Night stared at the trembling Sublime Notion coldly, a smirk forming on her face. "Little brat, I leave for a few seconds and you've become so bold? It seems like I need to remind you who the Big Sister arond here is."
Sublime Notion immediately screamed and tried to flee using spatial magic. There were various runes lit up in the room that condensed the aura of space and also froze Draco and Eva in place.
Sublime Notion laughed crazily. "Hahaha, these are defensive measures that came with the Aether Palace to protect any administrator from sudden attacks by powerful beings! You think I wouldn't be prepared for you, you stupid bondage lover!"
Sublime didn't even try to run anymore now that she had seen that this trap was effective on the Evil Duo. Rather, she took out her staff and aimed them at Riveting Night, crazily charging up all the power in the area that was sucked in by the Aether Palace into a single green orb.
"DIE, DIE, DIEEEE!! DIE FOR ME YOU EVIL BITCH!!!" She screeched like a banshee as she fired out the world-ending blast.