Transcendent Gene-Chapter 292: Treasure [4]

"Whew!"

The first thing to be said was not a word. The moment the final guard fell, Shiro sat on the ground and breathed a sigh of relief.

"I know we would’ve been able to do it alone, but man, am I running out of stamina! You guys would’ve had to carry me for the whole second half of it."

He shook his head and opened his litepack, grabbing a vial of healing serum to use.

"How’d it go for you? You’re here way earlier than we thought."

Gio was surprised by how casual his attitude was, but then again, he had already been surprised by the same thing before. There would come a time when he’d accept it as normal.

"It was alright," he responded, not dwelling on details. His arm was already back to normal. He wasted expensive healing serums to fix it, as ordinary ones wouldn’t be able to do so fast enough. Nevertheless, it was better to look unharmed than to show up with his arm snapped in half. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"I’m here now, and it looks like I came at the perfect time. You guys are crazy."

He looked at the ground below and made a wry expression as he saw the crumbling mansion below.

Shiro grinned in response.

"Crazy is fun. I’m starting to understand this Sequencing thing a little be– ow!"

Shiro jerked his head to the side as a tiny bubble exploded in front of his face. It didn’t contain force more powerful than a puff of air, but it was never meant to harm him.

"Don’t listen to him."

Serene rolled her eyes as she stepped up.

"He wants to brag like he wasn’t complaining the whole way up. For a second, I was wondering whether I wanted to throw him to the guards or not."

Shiro naturally didn’t sit there and let her talk. As the two of them got into a minor quarrel, Neriah showed why she was the one who took the leadership role when he was gone and explained their journey through the mansion.

They walked and talked, arriving at the vault door before the story was over.

"...it was more running than fighting, but it worked out. Shiro setting the mansion on fire was more effective than anything else we could’ve done, and if we wasted our energy down there, we wouldn’t have been able to win the fight up here."

Of course, that was under the pretense that Gio never arrived, but that was beside the point.

The vault door was one of the many visible patches in the room where the invisibility mechanism had been broken. It looked to be made of extremely dense metal, but all metal was still metal.

Gio melted through it with virtual energy while Neriah could bend it as long as she was making physical contact with it.

The vault door was broken open by their efforts, which in turn silenced the squabble that was taking place behind them.

More important than anything else was finally seeing what they’d done all this fighting for.

The treasures within the vault were no different from their expectations.

The sheer amount of raw materials within the vault was enough to give an impoverished family generational wealth, or, well, enough for a Sequencer to experience some significant breakthroughs in their strength.

Elixirs, Enhancers, Gene Fluids, and many other consumables joined those raw materials. Their use didn’t need to be described, and before Gio could get a good look at the assortment of them, his party members were already stuffing them into their litepacks.

There was material wealth as well. An entire corner was stacked from floor to ceiling with gold, purple, white, and black cards. Nearby were huge barrels filled with diamonds, gold, and other precious metals.

’There’s a lot to unpack. Litepacks won’t be able to carry even a fourth of it.’

Gio shrugged to himself. At this point, he didn’t mind showing these three his Storage Hole.

Shiro and Serene were just as trustworthy as Neriah, and they were reaching a level of courage that would keep their mouths shut if they were ever pressed for information.

’But I’ll let them fill up first. It’ll be easier to split the profits if everyone’s already decided what they want.’

Gio himself didn’t join them in searching the vault. He rushed directly to the mansion without paying attention to anything else, but he was now in a secure location.

The mansion fire below them had become an uncontrollable blaze. Even the roof that the invisible area stood on was burning, yet the entire invisible space was completely untouched.

The foundation of the mansion started falling apart, but the invisible structure didn’t fall with it.

’We’re suspended in the air through Aether tech.’

The Old Duke had to have some interesting underlings for it to be possible, but they were people to consider at a later time.

’Right now, I should focus on what I got off him.’

He did feel a little bad about it. When the Old Duke realized what he’d stolen, he’d be in the middle of war against the rebels.

’I definitely gave them a much worse nightmare to face.’

For those on the battlefield, it would be hell. He could only hope that Fabian would stay as far away from it as possible.

’We should look for him when all of this is over, but the best way to guarantee his safety or the safety of anyone else is to end the scenario so everyone disperses.’

He took the two glass nameplates out of his pocket.

He was incredibly curious about what the world told the Old Duke.

His eyes went to the clue in his left hand.

[The otherworldly beings of the past never returned to this world.]

His gaze shook as he read it.

Scenes appeared in his mind. Within the very cities manifested in the Scenario Quest, there were once hordes of portals.

Shadowy beings whose figures were vague and undefined, only described through the recollections of others, vanished into those portals.

The world they left behind was ruined. The cities were left in rubble, the environment was burned to ash, and the humans who remained were merely rats who would scamper around for a few more days or weeks before they died as well.

’That is...’

The scene was incomprehensible. That certainly wasn’t an event in Earth’s history. There wasn’t any scientific backing that supported the existence of such a severe extinction event.

A genetic bottleneck like that could be seen and felt in the world’s physical history.

’But the timeline doesn’t match either.’

Gio shook his head and looked at the clue again.

[The otherworldly beings of the past never returned to this world.]

Regardless of the scenes the clue represented, its meaning was clear.

The first clue Gio found said something similar.

[Humans have entertained relations with beings beyond their current understanding for as long as time in the human eye has existed.]

He assumed the beings mentioned in the text to be monsters; however, monsters were not the "otherworldly beings" in question.

’There were others. Others who arrived through portals at a time before the history that I’m aware of. Do they all share the same goal, or...?’

Gio’s attention refocused on the second clue.

[There were two worlds telling their stories, but only one to receive them.]

Earth was not telling its story. Earth’s story was still a part of the Gehenna Complex’s story that was still unfolding,

The two worlds telling stories could not be Earth.

"Earth" could only be the world "receiving stories" from two others.

’Where’s the scene?’

Despite staring at the clue for a long time, Gio wasn’t given any scenery that showed what the clue was related to. It was the only one of the five that didn’t come with some sort of context.

’That can’t be a coincidence.’

It had to be a situation where the context was too close to the answer.

’Or, these cards aren’t the originals.’

Gio had a hunch that cloned copies of cards that were created when other people realized already discovered clues would not have the same properties as the originals.

His was an original. When he touched it, he could still view the scenes present within.

The two with the military were original, as was the other card he took from the Old Duke.

’What if someone cloned this one before giving it to him to screw him over?’

There wasn’t such a thing as loyalty in the Old Duke’s camp, after all.

"Gio?"

He raised his head as his name was called. It turned out that Neriah arrived in front of him at some point without him noticing.

"Are you okay? Your expression doesn’t look too good right now," she said with furrowed brows.

Gio’s brows raised in surprise.

’Is it that bad?’

"I’m fine," he said out loud.

"I was just thinking over some things."

"Yeah. I could tell. That’s pretty much the exact expression you were making," Neriah responded.

She held her hand out and practically forced him to use it to help him stand up.

"I guess that means you managed to steal the Old Duke’s clues?"

Gio nodded. Neriah hummed in understanding.

His reaction, combined with that information, only alluded to difficulties, but she didn’t question him further because of it.

"We’re still in the middle of a war zone right now. Let’s clear this place out and get to safety first. Then we can discuss what to do about the clues and how we move forward."

Gio nodded again. It wasn’t that he didn’t agree with her.

Merely, he liked to have a preliminary understanding of these things before moving on.

’If it can’t be helped, it can’t be helped. It’s just annoying to carry around questions that can be answered by just sitting down and thinking about them.’

In the tower, there wasn’t anything like an obligation to others keeping him in motion. If he wanted to sit down and contemplate, he could.

But the tower was a memory of the past.

In the current day, certain freedoms had to be abandoned.

’Not that it’s a problem.’

Gio followed Neriah deeper into the vault and started helping his party members clean the place out.

Rather than a problem, it was just something he had to get used to.

And even that was nothing but a slow process that would naturally take place.

’Let’s focus on the loot.’

The moment he switched his focus, his emotions became quite a bit more positive.

After all, he was finally paying attention to the huge haul they’d acquired.

It was impossible to not smile after seeing so many good things.