City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

Treasure

Richard had flown straight into the weyr! Every dragon here could attack him!

It seemed like he didn't even understand his current situation, just standing around arrogantly without a care in the world. All the dragons got ready to pounce, and even Tiamat snuck a peek. But after a short internal struggle, she lay back down and continued her pretence. The Prime Evil was someone with great control over her own laws, and she could sense the suppression from his. She had calmed down significantly ever since Sharon beat her to beat death, and she was now much more peaceful.

Richard stood in the middle of the weyr, playing with the sapphire scroll. He knew exactly what was coursing through the dragons' minds, but that was the last thing he could care about right now. It was clear that Sharon had planned this some time ago, giving him full control over the demiplane. She had likely set the portal up for his demiplane when she first laid the foundations for it. The condition was her soul connection being broken.

This meant Sharon was in trouble! Richard couldn't begin to imagine just what could threaten someone who could brush off Apeiron's attacks with eas and crush opponents with a hundred draconic minions, but even more concerning was the fact that they could stop a master of space like her from escaping. Even a normal epic being was hard to stop, but she was much more than that.

However, power was always relative. There were countless dangerous places in the myriad planes, and nobody could live an eternity. He sighed, looking up at the slaves that could each dominate a lesser plane and holding up the contract, "Which of you bitches wants to try?"

His voice and expression remained calm as ever, without any move to activate his mana. However, this only made the dragons feel even more uneasy; they still remembered the aura from when the blue flames had been burning on him. Their only hope was a combined assault.

But since when did a true powerhouse fear a mass of enemies? Many dragons felt a chill in their hearts.

The black dragon next to Tiamat suddenly thought of something, turning to look at her nest. The mouth of the cave was empty, and he couldn't even see her silhouette despite the loud snores. She had obviously hidden herself deep within.

This dragon was thousands of years old and had been legendary for a long time.

Thinking of Richard's blue flames, he suddenly shivered and shrank back into his nest. Deep snores rang out from within moments later.

The dragons caught in this weyr were all quite smart, not giving in to recklessness easily. The hot headed ones always met their ends early. Seeing the two most powerful amongst them retreat, the rest knew what to do. Many followed suit, while a few even flew towards Richard and bowed in obeisance to their new master.

Richard had no time to bother with the fawning beasts. Seeing that no dragons dated to oppose him, he unfurled the soul scroll and activated it. An orb of blue light sank into his brow, showing him how to summon all the dragons in the weyr. It also gave him the standard summoning spell for these dragons, but without Sharon's attunement he could only summon one or two at a go that way.

He sighed, continuing to inspect the demiplane. A scroll with the method to activate the puppets appeared when he walked into the palace, which would allow him to keep the entire island running without any active management on his behalf. These puppets weren't very powerful, but they had the intelligence of high elves and a physique to match.

It was Sharon's treasury that gave him reason for pause. There were half a dozen materials able to serve as the core for Midren, and even a sky dragon core that was at the level of an archlord! Even covered in layers of magic arrays, that core was still radiating divine light, divine symbols floating across its surface. When he only got through a negligible chunk after an hour, he realised there was no way to find any clues and moved on.

Sharon's interests were similar to a dragon's. She collected all sorts of crystals that contained a lot of energy, filling two-thirds of the treasury with all colours and shapes of high energy stones. Most of the rest was random equipment she couldn't use, but that included three divine weapons, a dozen legendary ones, and a sea of everything lesser than that. Even if the divine weapons were of lesser divinity, this wealth was frightening.

Equipment took up a relatively small portion of Sharon's collection, a symptom of her combat style. She brawled up close, which was an easy way to destroy her equipment in battle. The miser eventually gave up on fancy equipment entirely, instead using her robes.

Most surprising was the personal library. Distal magic made it enormous, and the place had hundreds of stone platforms with times floating atop them. Some were simply stone or steel tablets, while others were even orbs of light that contained the power of laws. Most of the platforms were still empty, leaving less than a hundred if these things in the library, but every one was surrounded by a magic barrier. One had to decode the laws on any shield before being able to read the book within, and from the looks of it the power of the laws the times themselves contained could kill even legends if forced.

This library clearly had countless years of history. It wasn’t a creation of Sharon herself, but a divine item that had followed her from the first days she could remember. In a way, it was like the Archeron family tombs. The books here had never changed, but even she could only read about ten of them.

The construction of the weyr in this demiplane, the energy absorbing trees… it was all knowledge she had gotten from these books, a fact that also stood when it came to her immaculate control of space. This library was an inheritance of her race, and looking at the distribution most of its contents had gone missing in this time. Every book remaining was a treasure of immeasurable value.

The essence of this library was undoubtedly the orb of light floating above the tallest stone pillar in the centre. Richard quickly realised that he couldn’t even look at it directly despite his current strength; the laws it contained were too pure, too powerful. This was pure light, but it far exceeded anything he had come across before. Even the Radiant Lord seemed dull and colourless when compared.

He hesitated for a while before stretching out and trying to touch the barrier. Waves rippled across the surface, but as he looked closer Richard found that each ray was composed of thousands of minuscule symbols! These symbols weren’t even of divine tongue, designed to be smaller and more intricate so they were more power-dense. Thousands of unique symbols flashed across his sight, but he couldn’t understand a single one.

In that moment, Richard saw tens of thousands of symbols, that were all uniquely different!