Online: Eiodolon Realms – Child of Ruin-Chapter 35 - 34 - Beneath the Dust of Old Worlds

Outside the vault, the old stone corridor felt colder.

Rai had picked up a letter.

The handwriting was shaky. Almost desperate.

"To those who enter after me—if you read this, then I have failed. I could not save them. The cities burned, the rivers turned black, and my remedies came too late. I leave behind not salvation, but knowledge. If you walk this path, may you do better than I did."

There was no name.

Rai folded the note slowly. "Guess the old man had his regrets too."

Eron glanced over. "Do you think he died here?"

"It doesn’t really matter now. What matters is that we make good use of what he left behind."

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. It was heavy, like the vault itself had remembered something painful.

Rai and Alex moved quietly, the echoes of their footsteps dampened by the ancient, dust-laden air. Their spatial rings were now heavier, not physically, but with the weight of what they carried. Dozens of rare alchemical herbs, pills that could sell for small fortunes, even sealed manuscripts too ancient to decipher immediately.

"I still think we’re gonna die before we spend even a single gold from this," Alex muttered, adjusting the strap of his backpack for the fifth time.

"Then we die richer than most players," Rai replied dryly. "Silver lining, right?"

Alex snorted. "I mean... don’t you think people are gonna notice if we suddenly roll into Velondar with enough resources to buy a manor?"

Rai glanced back at him. "Which is why we won’t. Not immediately."

Rai and Alex stood against a broken pillar outside the vault’s final chamber, the faint hum of lingering enchantments still echoing down the stone halls behind them.

"We need to think this through," Rai said, arms folded as he stared at the many spatial rings filled to the brim. "There’s too much here. If we walk into Velondar with all this, we’ll paint targets on our backs."

Alex nodded, wiping sweat from his brow. "We’d be glowing like loot pinatas. Every thief, guild, and hidden player will want a piece."

Rai leaned forward, fingers tapping on his knee. "We stash most of it. Deep. Somewhere only we know. Bring out a few rare herbs, a couple vials, maybe one ancient scroll. Enough to flex a little but not enough to raise suspicion."

Alex tilted his head. "You sure? Some of these pills could push us ahead by days."

Rai gave him a look. "And if we get mugged on the road?"

"...Ok, Point taken."

They moved quickly. After sealing the vault’s final door again,using a new glyph lock Rai etched into the stone, they picked a narrow offshoot tunnel just before the vault chamber, half-collapsed and reeking of mold. It took them the better part of an hour, but they carved a small hollow into the rock, lined it with magic-repellent parchment found inside one of the alchemical kits, and placed the majority of the rings and high-tier loot within.

Rai carefully activated a cloaking rune—an advanced enchantment that blurred detection through sight, smell, magic, and even divine sense. He didn’t know why Arvan the Bastard had so many anti-theft tools, but he was thankful for them.

"Think it’ll hold?" Alex asked, stepping back and wiping his hands.

They stopped near the fork in the tunnel where they’d entered earlier. Rai knelt and tapped the stone floor, then muttered, "Still active."

Alex watched curiously as Rai reached into his spatial ring and pulled out a small, thumb-sized charm with a sunburst engraving.

"Gonna seal the entrance?" Alex asked.

"No." Rai shook his head. "We’re going to hide a stash."

He took out a secondary spatial ring—one they hadn’t filled completely—and began transferring about 50% of the loot they had not hidden earlier into it. Scrolls, pill boxes, mid-grade herbs, and all coinage. It was still a treasure hoard by most standards.

Alex’s brow furrowed. "Wait. We’re leaving that here too?"

"Yes. This can work as a form of a decoy treasure. We keep just a small amount for now."

"And the rest?"

Rai smiled. "We sell just enough to upgrade gear, blend in, and pay for the guild paperwork when we get to Velondar."

Alex hesitated, then nodded. "Smart. Paranoid, but smart."

They searched for a section of the corridor where the wall had partially collapsed. Behind the rubble, Rai found a tight crevice in the stone—just deep enough to push the secondary spatial ring into. He tapped the wall again and whispered a [Minor Concealment Sigil] over it, masking the aura of anything magical nearby.

Satisfied, he stood.

"Think it’ll hold?" Alex asked, stepping back and wiping his hands.

"Unless a god themselves decides to sniff around, yeah."

"...That’s oddly specific."

"It’ll last a few weeks. Long enough for us to stabilize in the city."

"Anyways, even this one gets taken it doesn’t matter its’s a much much smaller part of the treasure."

Once done, they filled their own inventory rings with carefully curated goods. A few healing elixirs, some lower-tier aura pills, and a selection of rare herbs they could pass off as quest rewards or finds from a minor dungeon.

To any outsider, they’d look like lucky players who had stumbled onto a small ruin and lived to tell the tale. No one would know they’d just looted a forgotten vault tied to one of the most dangerous figures in the alchemical history of the realm.

They resumed walking.

As they exited the final tunnel, emerging into the decaying courtyard where the vault had first been discovered, a long breath escaped Rai’s lips. The sun was high—perhaps late afternoon in the game world—and birds circled overhead.

Alex stretched his arms wide. "Gods, I hate being underground."

"You’re a adult you shouldn’t be afraid of such stuff"

"And I like my open sky, thank you very much."

Rai gave him a tired look. "A sky won’t save you if a fire mage decides to roast your face."

"Maybe not. But it’s prettier a lot more than that place."

They laughed—low and tired, but genuine. The kind of laughter you shared after brushing past death and still breathing. Alex slapped Rai on the back.

"By the way," he said, "you were... kind of badass back there. All those traps you solved, you were really cool"

"I guess you are not too bad yourself, after all you helped me with that quest."

Alex blinked and made a look as if he was sad. "You guess?"

"Not guess, my bad you are cool buddy.""

Alex made a smug face that let Rai knew that Alex was just joking, "I know that much."

"Shut up, Alex."

They made camp a short distance from the ruins, atop a small rise overlooking the forest. Rai began roasting some dried meat over a makeshift spit while Alex sorted through the small portion of loot they had carried with them—herbs that could be sold to local alchemists and a few lower-grade pills that wouldn’t draw attention.

Alex broke the silence after a while. "You really think... we can build a guild out of this?"

Rai didn’t answer immediately. He flipped the meat slowly, watching the fat drip onto the flame with a sizzle.

"I don’t want just a guild," Rai finally said.

Alex tilted his head. "Then what?"

Rai looked up at the sky.

"I want a legacy."

His voice was quiet, but filled with something deep and hungry. Not arrogance. Not pride. Something else. Something broken and reforged.

Rai sighed, stretching his back. "Alright. Let’s get out of here before another quest marker shows up and sends us spiraling into some undead family drama."

Alex chuckled. "Not gonna lie... I half expected a ghost to pop out and give us another riddle." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Don’t jinx it."

They started going back to the city.

Alex suddenly stopped. "You ever think about how weird this all is?"

Rai blinked. "Weird how?"

"I mean, it’s a game, right? But... it doesn’t feel like one. Not anymore. The vault, the diary, that thing about cities burning and rivers turning black... What kind of game writes a story like like that?"

Rai didn’t answer immediately. His eyes followed a patch of sunlight as it filtered down through a crack in the ruined ceiling, dust motes drifting like falling stars.

"Sometimes," Rai said softly, "I wonder if this world’s more real than the one we came from."

Alex glanced at him, uncertain.

Rai shook his head. "Forget it. Let’s go.

Something about the vault’s final message stuck with him.

’The cities burned. The rivers turned black.’

He had seen the previous world and how it had burnt too.

And he wasn’t going to let it happen again.

.......

Later that night, when Alex had logged out of the game, Rai sat alone by the fading embers of the fire. He was still in the world of eiodolon realms. He pulled out the alchemical blueprint he’d stolen from the hidden box—the one with the seven-layered pill.

There was something strange about it.

Not just its structure, but the way it glowed faintly under moonlight. As though part of it was alive.

"Another mystery," Rai muttered.

He didn’t know what made him pocket it instead of storing it with the others. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the faint tug of something... familiar.

Whatever it was, it had value. And not just in gold.

He leaned back, watching the stars drift above. Somewhere out there, systems were shifting. Gods were watching. Threads were twisting.

But for tonight?

He was still alive.

Still hidden.

And the pieces were finally falling into place.