The Suspicious Treasury
People often picture a treasure vault as a glittering heap of gold coins surrounded by stacked swords and staves. Yet that image is rarely seen outside a dragon’s lair. Valuable items demand a methodical approach to storage. The vault was divided into precise zones, each shelf and case meticulously organized by type. The air grew noticeably drier and cooler the moment one stepped inside, tightening the nerves from the threshold onward.
The first thing to catch Rood’s eye was the swords. There are quite a few good ones here.
He drew his own blade for a quick comparison. Its edge, chipped and dulled in countless battles, looked shabby beside the weapons on display.
“I always thought of them as nothing more than consumables, but seeing them like this… it hits differently.”
Rood’s sword frequently lost its edge in combat, so he simply picked up whatever decent replacement he could find on the battlefield. Some soldiers made a hobby of collecting fine blades, but Rood never bothered. In the chaos of war, strategy and a soldier’s skill mattered far more than the quality of steel.
Still, as a swordsman himself, he could not help but feel moved by the true worth of the weapons before him. A broad, thick white blade rested beside a pair of sleek black curved swords. Solenin and Noksen’s Il-do and Wol-do.
They had belonged to heroes of the former Kingdom Alliance—a married couple whose love story was still legendary. The tale of two warriors who met on the battlefield, fell in love, and held their wedding amid the war was a favorite source of hope for lovelorn soldiers.
Even so, Rood felt a thrill at seeing with his own eyes the blades he had only heard of in rumors. Yet because he preferred straight swords over curved ones, he set them aside. The other weapons proved equally difficult to choose. Many had overly ornate hilts, while the blades that appealed to him were either too short or too thin for his taste.
Something around this size would be perfect.
The one sword that had given him the most pause was “Claw,” renowned as one of the Ten Great Swords of the continent. Its unique design featured a handle connected along the inner edge of the blade, allowing the massive weapon to split into two separate swords.
“Beautiful. But far too heavy, and impractical for most situations. It truly suits the God of War Geness, who favored it.”
Geness had been an insectoid afflicted with polydactyly. Most of his kind possessed four limbs, but rare individuals grew six. Claw had been forged specifically for that six-armed warrior; an ordinary human like Rood could never wield it properly.
Rood turned his attention to the cabinet storing mineral ingots.
Mt. Iris iron. Ispero.
The deep blue ingot was called Ispero, an alloy only the most skilled dwarves could forge. Mt. Iris formed the steep border between the Empire and the Kingdom Alliance, and many dwarves had made their homes among its peaks. Ispero was created by blending meteorite iron from the falling stars that struck the range with the rare Iris steel mined from its deepest veins. Harder than any known metal and half the weight of ordinary iron, it was reserved exclusively for elite knightly armaments.
Even those weapons contained only small amounts of the alloy; blades made entirely of Ispero were vanishingly rare.
“If I’m taking anything, it should be this ingot.”
An ingot alone would not produce a finished sword, but Isabelle would surely locate a master blacksmith capable of shaping it. Rood reached for the blue bar.
Woong!
He turned his head to the right. On the adjacent shelf, something was vibrating with a crimson glow.
Rood stepped closer. The object was a perfect cube, lavishly decorated with intricate gears and mechanisms.
Doesn’t look like a clock…
Gears spun freely across every face, yet there were no hands to be seen. He lifted the cube from the shelf, turning it slowly in his hands.
“How do I turn this thing off?”
There were no buttons or switches. Rood was growing genuinely unsettled.
The vibration intensified. The gears began to whirl at a frantic pace.
What the hell is this? Some kind of bomb?
He had heard wartime rumors of mages hurling strange objects that leveled entire areas in explosions. Growing suspicious, Rood began pressing and twisting every protrusion he could find.
Click. Clack.
When he gripped a raised section on one face and turned it, the angry red light gradually calmed, shifting into a gentle blue radiance.
“Whew, thank—”
Clank!
The cube sprang open. A blinding surge of light erupted outward. Rood squeezed his eyes shut, but the brilliance still pierced through, turning his entire vision pure white.
Am I going to die like this?
Contrary to his fears, the light slowly began to fade. When darkness finally returned, Rood forced his eyes open.
Something wet and slippery slid into his mouth.
What… what is this?
His vision remained blurred. Only the thick smell of blood was vivid. Every muscle ached. Exhaustion weighed on him like lead. The pain was so severe it threatened to scatter his mind entirely.
The scene resembled a prison cell—or perhaps the inside of a birdcage. Through a narrow window, only one of three moons hung in the sky. Rood sat slumped, staring up at that solitary moon with murderous fury. The impulse to slice even the moon in half nearly drove him mad.
This can’t be real.
He was kissing a woman.
Only then did Rood understand why the world looked so hazy—his eyes were flooded with tears.
Why? Why does it feel like this…?
Never in his life had his emotions been this chaotic. The experience clashed violently with the simple, direct philosophy by which he lived.
He hated the woman before him as much as he hated the moonlight. Yet he loved her enough to linger in the kiss, unwilling to pull away. He wanted to cut away the entire unfair world, along with his own powerless self. He wanted to sever them completely.
But nothing would be cut. Not the world. Not himself. Not the moonlight. Not even her clumsy, insistent tongue that pushed forward as if demanding he take everything she offered.
“Why? Why are you doing this? Why?!”
Rood resented her.
She ended the kiss and whispered, “I’m sorry. This was the only way.”
He pulled her into his arms. “I’ll come back. I’ll make you regret that choice. Wait for me. I swear it.”
She smiled through her tears. “You fool… farewell.”
Light flooded Rood’s vision once more.
When he regained his senses, he was back inside the neatly organized vault. The cube lay silent in his hand.
Crash!
Rood clutched his head, gasping for air.
“Hah… hah… what the hell was that…?”
After steadying his breathing, he seized the cube and strode out of the vault.
“Have you chosen—ah, where are you going, sir?”
Rood ignored Pete’s polite inquiry and marched straight toward Isabelle’s office.
Bang!
He threw the door open without knocking and stormed up to her desk.
“Hm? You chose so quickly?”
“What is this thing? What the hell is it supposed to be, showing me some unknown hallucination like that—”
Isabelle tilted her head. “Does this Mueject show illusions?”
“You don’t even know what it is? Then why was it sitting in the vault?”
“Wait, wait! Rood, you seem far too agitated. Please calm down and—”
Rood slammed his palm against the desk.
“I can’t calm down!”
He already knew exactly who the woman in the vision had been. The memory refused to fade; the more he recalled, the sharper it became. Though she had looked more worn than usual, he had recognized her at once—brown hair, violet eyes, skin so pale and delicate it made one instinctively gentle. Yet the woman in the vision had been noticeably more mature, more womanly than the Isabelle who sat before him now.
She had been a breathtaking beauty, the kind that could steal the breath of even someone like Rood, who had never cared for romance. He had told himself dozens of times that it could not be her, but no other possibility came to mind.
“Calm yourself. It seems the Mueject showed you something. What exactly did you see?”
“I… cannot say.”
How could he possibly tell her? That in the vision he had been kissing a woman—and that the woman had looked unmistakably like her?
“It’s all right if you cannot speak of it. Just give me the general idea. Was it horrifying? Frightening? Painful?”
Rood nodded silently. All of those things. Every emotion the vision had forced upon him had been overwhelming.
“I do not know the precise nature of that Mueject, but… ah, one moment.”
Isabelle rose and retrieved a thick ledger from the bookshelf beside her simple bed. She opened it with a grave expression. Rood stepped closer.
“What is that book?”
“A record of the family’s vault, including the uses of each item. Let me see… this is strange.”
Isabelle frowned as she read carefully.
“A rather peculiar Mueject. Rood, listen well. This magical tool is not one that shows illusions.”
Isabelle continued, “This Mueject is……”