The party moved cautiously down the newly discovered tunnel, the air growing warmer and drier with each step. The rough, natural stone of the spider's cave had given way to perfectly carved, smooth walls that spoke of ancient, expert masonry. Faint, dormant runes were etched into the stone, their magic long since faded, but Noel traced them with a fascinated finger as they walked. Finn took the lead, his greatsword held ready, the tiny sliver of light at the far end of the passage growing steadily brighter, a beacon of hope after the suffocating darkness.
He turned a final corner and stopped dead in his tracks, his breath catching in his throat. His eyes, wide with disbelief, reflected a brilliant, golden glow. He slowly, carefully, climbed down a short, rocky ledge into the chamber beyond. The rest of the party followed, their own gasps of shock echoing his as they stepped into the light.
They were standing in the spider queen's true nest, her hoard. It was a massive, circular cavern, but unlike the dark, web-filled chambers before, this one was aglow with the light of what must have been thousands of enchanted torches, all burning with a cool, eternal flame. The light glittered and danced off of veritable mountains of treasure. Gold, silver, Veyl, and Aurean coins were piled in glittering heaps that reached halfway to the cavern ceiling. Masterwork suits of armor, enchanted weapons, and powerful magical artifacts were strewn about like discarded toys. There was enough wealth here to buy a castle, perhaps even a small kingdom, and all the armies to defend it.
For a moment, they were all paralyzed by the sheer, overwhelming sight of it. Then, the spell broke.
Lyra let out a squeal of pure, unrestrained excitement, a sound so high-pitched it made Kaelen wince. She took a running start and dove headfirst into the nearest pile of gold coins, disappearing completely for a second before re-emerging with a victorious shout, throwing handfuls of gold into the air like a child in a pile of autumn leaves. "WE'RE RICH! WE'RE SO, SO RICH!"
Kaelen let out a low whistle, his eyes wide as he picked up a massive, perfectly balanced war axe with an edge that hummed with latent power. Finn, ever the historian, was examining a suit of plate armor bearing the crest of a long-forgotten noble house. Noel, however, was beaming at something else entirely. Tucked away in a corner, almost hidden behind a stack of ornate shields, was a pile of strange, dull, metallic ore. It looked like unrefined bronze, but it seemed to hum with a faint, inner power that made the air around it vibrate. He practically leaped for it, his eyes wild with a creator's joy as he cradled a piece in his hands.
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"It's really here! I can't believe it's actually here!" he shouted, his voice filled with a reverence the others didn't understand.
"What is it?" Kaelen asked, tilting his head. "Looks like a bunch of weird rocks to me."
"You don't get it!" Noel said, his voice ecstatic. "This isn't just a rock! This is Aegis Ore! The legends are true! It's said to have a near-perfect structural integrity, to be almost conceptually unbreakable! It's impossibly rare! The things I could make with this⦠Kaelen, I could forge you a shield that could stop a dragon's breath! Finn, a sword that would never lose its edge! Rikoâ" He stopped, his mind already racing with a thousand impossible designs. The party was a bit lost on the technical details, but Finn just chuckled as Noel began frantically gathering the precious ore, some of it slipping from his overeager grasp.
"GUYS! GUYS, LOOK! YOU WON'T BELIEVE THIS!" Lyra's voice shouted from across the cavern. She had climbed out of the gold pile and was now holding up a large, well-made leather pouch, her face a mask of pure, unadulterated glee. "IT'S A BOTTOMLESS BAG!"
The party stared in shock. Bottomless bags were legendary artifacts, notoriously difficult to create, their enchantments a closely guarded secret of Archon-level mages. The fact that one was just lying here, discarded among the rest of the hoard, was incredible.
But Riko wasn't celebrating.
While her friends were dazzled by the glittering, golden light, her Kokugan was showing her a very different, and much darker, story. To her, the cavern was a graveyard of silent, screaming souls. The bright, clear outlines of the coins, the weapons, the armorâthey were all tainted. Each one had a faint, residual aura of its previous owner clinging to it. Her Crest didn't just see objects; it saw their history, their essence. She could perceive the fragmented echoes of their owners' final momentsâa flash of a screaming face reflected in the surface of a shield, the lingering, desperate terror on a dropped coin pouch, the fading outline of a hand that had once gripped the very axe Kaelen now held.
She walked through the treasure, the joyful shouts of her friends a distant, muffled sound. Her heart grew heavier with each step. This wasn't a treasure hoard. It was a collection of last moments, a museum of death. She moved aside a pile of shields, and her hand touched something soft and leathery. She picked it up. It was a small, leather-bound adventurer's journal, its pages warped and stained with what could only be old, dried blood.
Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. These weren't trophies. This was a monster's larder.
Riko turned to her friends, her own face pale, her voice trembling with the weight of her terrible discovery.
"Guys..." she said, her voice quiet but cutting through their celebration like a blade. "Stop."
They all fell silent, their triumphant expressions fading as they saw the look of pure, unadulterated horror on her face. Lyra, still holding the bottomless bag, took a half-step towards her, a concerned frown replacing her grin. "Riko? What is it? What's wrong?"
Riko held up the bloodstained journal.
"This loot..." she said, her voice cracking. "...it belonged to the spider queen's victims. To the people she killed."