Chapter 526 Sanguine Wood
After they stop talking, Angus begins to search for a good artifact. Since he couldn\'t just use detection skills to know the artifact, he needed to inspect the artifact closely. Fortunately, Aunt Extalia is also helping him search for the artifact.
Actually, Angus didn\'t need any more artifacts. The reason he asked for an artifact reward is for his beloved girlfriend. Jayna\'s fire is very lethal and could burn anything. However, it also limits her.
Many of her skills couldn\'t be used or improved without proper weapons, especially her sword skill. Her current sword may be strong and on the border of artifact grade as it is made of many rare materials.
Unfortunately, it will turn to ash in seconds when she slightly loses control of her fire. Knowing her problem, Angus plans to give Jayna an artifact that is suitable for her. Aunt Extalia and King Leon also knew about this and didn\'t have a problem with it.
His reward is only to get one artifact from the Royal Heart Ancient Vault. They didn\'t care what he would do with the artifact as long as he didn\'t give it to an unknown person or throw it away.
They also didn\'t have a problem giving the artifact to Jayna since it would increase her combat prowess. Sadly, finding the matching artifact for Jayna is difficult. As Jayna said before, Fire Phoenix never wields any artifact since her fire is incompatible with any existing artifact.
Even after inspecting all the artifacts in the Vault, they still couldn\'t find any artifacts that matched Jayna. All the artifacts give a strong rejection to her.
"Tch… Another rejection." said Angus as he took back the sword artifact from Jayna.
"Angus, it is fine. This is your reward. You should be the one that chooses it." said Jayna, as she didn\'t mind another rejection.
"Well, you are right. It seems we don\'t have a choice but to make you a new weapon artifact. Aunt Extalia, is there some rare material stored here?" said Angus.
"Material? Did you want to give up your artifact reward and choose material instead?" asked Aunt Extalia.
"Yup." replied Angus shortly.
"Fine. Besides, you also didn\'t lack any artifacts at the moment. If I am not wrong, we have some rare material stored here. Let me check the list first." said Aunt Extalia as she looked at the small board in her hand.
The small board has a function similar to an electronic tablet from Earth and shows the list of items in the Vaults. It is one of the complex magic tools she gets from the blue-colored woman guide.
"Here, take a look at it. It seems we don\'t have too much material stored here. Most of them are even unidentified." said Aunt Extalia while showing the list.
Angus begins to look at the list and see the picture of each material with Jayna. This way, she can help them identify some material with Fire Phoenix knowledge.
"Hmm… Wait, this is not sanguine wood." commented Jayna after seeing the picture of the wood with a red pattern around it.
"Angus, summon it." said Jayna.
Then, Angus tapped the summon button on the board and found a wooden branch that appeared in front of them. This is one of the functions of the board list. It could help the people to summon items inside the Vault to help save time in searching.
Jayna immediately observes the wooden branch in front of them carefully. The wooden branch is like the one in the picture. It is like a normal dry wooden branch that you could find in any tree, but it also has red crimson veins all over its body.
"As expected, it is not Sanguine Wood. Sanguine Wood has reddish marks like a rash, but this one is a more bulged vein." said Jayna.
"Jayna, what is this wood?" asked Angus.
"I also don\'t know." replied Jayna.
"Ehhh?!!!" as Angus didn\'t expect such an answer.
"Well, Fire Phoenix only knows this wood is sturdy and could even withstand her fire. But she is not a researcher or scientist. So, she was never interested in this stuff. She only finds it is an interesting wooden branch when she burns some civiliza.. I mean her enemy." said Jayna.
\'Did she just want to say civilization?\' thought Aunt Extalia for a moment.
"Interesting. Did Fire Phoenix have more of this?" asked Angus.
"Nope. She only finds it once and it immediately breaks under her physical strength when she plays catch with someone." replied Jayna.
"Err... So, it is weak physically but has strong properties to withstand fire. Alright, let\'s look at the other first. If nothing is worth it, I will just take this branch." said Angus.
"Are you sure? The reason why it is locked here is that everyone thought it was Sanguine Wood Branch. If someone knows you have it, it may lead to a lot of trouble." asked Aunt Extalia.
"It\'s fine. It is not like I will openly show it to everyone and only research it secretly." reassure Angus.
"Fine. But I hope you are careful when researching it. We are still not completely sure if it is Sanguine Wood or not. In case it is Sanguine wood, please return it to Leon." warned Aunt Extalia.
Sanguine Wood comes from one of the most sinister natural phenomena in the world. It comes from a Sanguine Tree that only grows on the battlefield with countless corpses on it. The tree will grow by consuming all the blood in the area.
The most sinister thing is that many people try to cultivate the tree artificially by making thousands of people kill each other, but none succeed. One of the major forces even dared to incite war just to try growing Sanguine trees.
This force is none other than the Vampire race of the Eternal Kingdom. For the vampire, Sanguine wood is one of the best materials for their weapon since it is connected with blood.
Unfortunately, none of their attempts to grow the Sanguine Tree is working and only leaves millions of people to die pointlessly. Since then, the World Alliance has decided to ban the material of Sanguine Wood and define it as a forbidden item.
Still, Sanguine Wood is too precious to just be destroyed. The Wood is famous material for magician staff capable of boosting metal, earth, and water elements. It is hard to find material that has attunement to many elements at once.
"Sure. I don\'t plan on researching such a sinister object as Sanguine wood. It sounds like too much trouble for me." said Angus.
After inspecting the other material, they decide to take the mysterious wooden branch since there is no other different material that interests Angus and Jayna.
Leaving the Royal Heart Vault, "Are you done?" asked the blue-colored woman guide.
"Yes." said Aunt Extalia.
*Bam* The vault gate instantly closes and Aunt Extalia takes back the Heart shape key.
"Baron Victory, did you want to immediately go to Archmage Bern\'s personal vault now?" asked Angus.
Angus glances at the other two and gets a silent nod from them.
"Sure." said Angus.
*Wisss* Suddenly, another similar blue-colored woman guide appeared near Aunt Extalia and Jayna.
"Duchess Amberblaze and Miss Heart, please follow me. I will guide you to the lobby area." said the newly appeared blue-colored woman.
"Baron Victory, please stand near me." said the other guide.
Angus follows the guide\'s instructions while Jayna and Aunt Extalia follow the other guide. *Swishh* Suddenly, Angus felt the scene change and he appeared inside the enclosed space. Surprisingly, Angus didn\'t feel any space fluctuation while being teleported.
Still, Angus didn\'t panic and observed the surroundings. He is inside an enclosed room surrounded by a wall with a fireplace on top of the pedestal in the middle of the room. The fire dimly lit the room. He also finds a big sturdy door on one of the wall sides.
"According to the contract, the key holder must open the vault independently. Otherwise, the key holder will stay in this place. I wish you luck in opening it, Baron Victory." said the blue-colored woman before disappearing, leaving Angus alone.
"So, is it some sort of test? No, the archmage must put this as one of the security mechanisms for his vault." said Angus before observing the dimly lit room.
After observing for a few minutes while using [Analyze] in full power, "Tch… What a nasty mechanism." said Angus as he approached the door.
He begins to engrave the door with an unknown rune. Then, he takes a few things before throwing them into the fireplace. *Whoshh* The fire gets bigger for a moment before changing color. Its color turns into a rainbow color and spouts seven humanoids made of fire.
Each of these beings has different fire colors starting from Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, like the rainbow colors. The humanoid fire ignores Angus and goes towards the door. They stab the door with a sword made of fire in different places.
The sword\'s fire spread like a vein towards Angus\' rune that he had engraved before. As soon as all the multicolored fire reaches the rune, it shines brightly and envelops the whole room. During this moment, the ring on Angus\' finger reacts to the light and shine.
The entire room was enveloped by the light and an unknown person in a hooded cloak appeared in front of him.