Ortai Legacy: Arrival

10.3 - Discovery (L)

Mar'kost's voice woke me. [Good morning! It's time to get up and come home.]

Groaning telepathically, I drank my breakfast. The dark haze of last night had faded, at least a little. I wouldn't say that I had hope for the future, but at least I had a few short-term goals: A) fill my canteen with arka; B) break into the ship's Vault; C) fill the rest of my inventory with money; and D) go back to Cadmus's ranch.

Mar'kost chattered about his own breakfast as I began my plans. As soon as I took my canteen from my inventory, its contents vaporized in a cloud of steam. Almost as quickly, the steam obtained a violet tint and condensed in mid-air. I caught some of it, but most of it fell into the fountain. I filled my canteen, sealed it, and stored it in my inventory.

With Butcher escorting me, Weylan guided me to the Vault. He instructed me to cut through a side door in the Source room, revealing an unnervingly pristine stretch of hallway. Bulkheads on either end of the hallway had kept the area free of monsters. An escort was entirely unnecessary, but I still felt better with a mimic watching over me.

Across the hall were intact-looking doors to the Armory and Vault. I cut into the Vault with more effort than the Source room's door had required. At Weylan's urging, I made the hole in the door larger than I would've done otherwise—so I could remove larger items from the Vault in the future.

Regardless of the lack of monsters, the room hadn't survived centuries of disuse entirely intact. Some tremor had knocked over floor-to-ceiling shelving units, scattering metal boxes and their contents across the room. Even with Weylan's help, it took a while to locate the boxes of currency among countless weapons, devices, and raw materials.

There were a few scraps of linen-ish material that could've been paper money at some point, but the real jackpot was the thousands of crystalline coins in a pile. They were comparable to silver dollars in size and had a round hole in the middle; each variety of coin had a different raised design and color.

[Which ones are worth the most?] I asked Mar'kost, encouraging him to look through my eyes.

[The Void—the black ones—are the most valuable by far, but it's best to avoid attention if possible. With some face paint, you could pass as an amphit, so I recommend you take Wetland coins. They're the magenta ones.]

I collected several hundred magenta coins before failing to find any more. "Do I have a decent amount of room in my inventory?"

"The term 'decent' is highly subjective, but you do have enough room to hold nearly six times the number of coins you've already collected."

"Great." [What other coins should I get?]

[Grassland—the yellow-green ones—and Freshwater—the bright blue ones—are good choices. Of course, any large amount of coins will draw some attention, but the bank is unlikely to report common ones to the Adventurer's Guild.]

[If we're reported, will we get locked up?]

[Oh, it's not illegal to raid unclaimed dungeons—but the knowledge would find its way to Zephyr and complicate matters.]

[Gotcha.] I collected hundreds—if not thousands—of Grassland and Freshwater coins before my inventory was finally full. Part of me wanted to fill a box with more coins and bring it too, but that would carry the risk of being robbed—unlike my inventory, which was tied to a weapon I could magically recall at will.

With Butcher escorting me, I safely reached the ship's entrance room.

"Hey, in the future, I'm probably going to shout 'Butcher' from here, and I'd like you to come. Will you be able to hear me?"