Divine Beast Ascension

Inspecting the Ring

The next day, all the gorillas banded together to finish the huts. Vloz and Ania supervised while Rathe raced everyone else to see who could finish first.

Oli had snuck away to deep inside the magicite mine. He told everyone that he couldn’t wait any longer to train but he only wanted to use this chance to examine the contents of his void ring. It was the best moment to guarantee that he wouldn’t be disturbed, so Oli couldn’t miss the chance.

He activated his ring and released everything, almost giving himself a heart attack. What appeared in front of him was the exact mountain of treasure and items from Trada’s cave. Not believing his eyes, Oli reached out and grabbed a handful of gold coins to confirm reality.

Knowing that this would take too long to sort through it all by hand, he put everything back into the ring. Then, by controlling his essence through the void ring, Oli found that he could somewhat decipher what things were. He began to remove anything that felt similar to their appropriate piles; like gold coins, weapons, scrolls, and cores of all kinds.

The biggest surprise was the final item that he pulled out from the ring. On top of its little cot, sat the black dragon egg. Speechless, he stared at it and rubbed his hands across its unique surface, verifying that it was the same egg that he returned to Trada two moons ago.

“What the… Why is this here?” Oli thought to himself.

If Trada left everything to him that was one thing, but when Oli saw the egg, he got an idea of what had happened to her. He knew that she loved her egg too much to abandon it, even willing to die for its sake. If she left him the egg, that meant she was unable to take care of it. Deep down he wished that Trada was still alive somewhere, but he had to face the facts.

Shaking off his nerves, Oli scanned over his many treasures and made his way to the gold. He raked through the large pile with his hand, amazed at how much it was. He grabbed a handful of coins and counted them. Then with the help of his aura, Oli compared the size of the pile and his handful to know he had at least one hundred thousand pieces of gold, maybe more.

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What caught Oli’s eye, though, was a large chest that Oli had placed next to the pile. He opened it and saw a vast amount of black coins with a hint of gold veins running along the surface of each coin. Oli guessed that he had over ten thousand of these dark coins. He was unsure what they were, but he felt that they may be more precious than even the gold.

Moving on to the pile of weapons, Oli separated them by fighting style and then by their grade.

Thanks to Rathe’s tall tales and stories of his favorite fights and weapons, Oli knew that weapons were graded the same was as cultivation techniques and battle arts. To try and guess their grades Oli scanned each one with his essence and placed the most powerful ones to the side.

When he reached a pair of heavy metal gauntlets and his eyes went wide. “Are these… divine weapons?” he mused. They felt completely different from the others and were far more powerful. Remembering that feeling, he pulled out two more divine weapons.

In the end, there were thirteen mortal weapons and three divine weapons.

The mortal weapons were five different long swords of varying strength, two battle axes, two maces, three spears, and a pair of bracers that Oli had taken a liking to. What he noticed was that most of the weapons were crafted to using a specific essence type. The only ones Oli was certain contained traces of earth essence were a mace, a spear, and his new bracers. Sadly, there were no weapons with dark essence, but he decided to move on to the divine weapons.

The first was a massive war hammer with no traces of essence whatsoever but was made of an extremely durable material unknown to Oli. Second were the gauntlets, and they did contain traces of earth essence.

When he saw these two weapons, he could only think of his mom and Uncle Rathe. He knew that these would be perfect for them and had to find a way to gift them these weapons without them wanting to see the rest of the ring’s contents. He moved on to the final weapon, knowing that an opportunity to gift them might show itself.

The last weapon was a pitch-black halberd and it was easy to recognize it as the most powerful and mysterious of the bunch. It was laced in dark essence and had dragons etched along the shaft.

When Oli applied his essence to it, the halberd itself felt malicious and sinister, but if Oli retracted his essence from the halberd it all but turned invisible. Of all the weapons, this was the one Oli wanted to use the most and he made it his goal to one day use it after he becomes a divine beast.

Oli didn’t examine the mountain of cores because he could already feel that they all varied in power and essence type, so he simply put them away with the weapons and gold.

Only the scrolls were left; the pile that Oli was most excited to see because the knowledge he could gain was priceless. There were battle arts, maps, a cultivation technique, and two notes labeled “Oli” and “My Child.”

Knowing which was his, Oli opened it to find that is was from Trada. It read:

Dear Oli,

I’m sorry for leaving you behind without warning. If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably already guessed that I’m no longer able to help you. I was out of time and had to leave before I was unable to. For that reason, I trust my child to you and everything I had available at the time as well. Know that for a dragon to give birth, it is very difficult and if lucky to be pregnant, it would take almost one hundred years for the egg to develop. I was both fortunate and unfortunate for my egg to have a mutated bloodline from the Razor-hide Dragon and Toxic-shadow Dragon bloodlines. Fortunate for my child to have amazing potential as a cultivator like yourself. Unfortunate for me as my body wasn’t able to adapt and easily deliver my egg, leaving me heavily weakened in body and soul. And with Brak’s acting out only hours after delivering the egg, it became impossible for me to recover. The egg should hatch in about twenty years, and I beg that you care for my child in my place. If given the chance in the future, seek out my Toxic-shadow Dragon clan and they should be able to help you. Thank you.

-Trada

Oli closed the note and immediately stored it in the ring. He then wiped his eyes dry and moved on to the pile of scrolls.

The battle arts were interesting but there was only one novice grade that he took note of before grabbing the cultivation technique. The Dark Abyss cultivation technique was very mysterious and ancient, having been passed down for ages. Reading it over, Oli was glad to find that it was a king grade cultivation technique. With this and the Ravaging Earth technique, Oli would be able to reach the king stage much easier than most cultivators, if he could stay out of trouble.

Finally, he opened up the two maps. There was one marked the Elusive Black region and it was filled with over one hundred territories. Some major cities and places of conflict were marked but it mostly showed the geography, which let Oli eventually find the gorillas’ current territory.

According to the map, the territory was on the border of the region and the border of the prefecture. This was something very important and needed to be shared with the others because if the map was correct many bandit groups targeted that border.

The second map was interesting but completely useless to Oli because it was the map of Nightscape City, the capital of the region. He stored it in case he would need it later and exited the cave with the first map in hand, ready to show Vloz and the rest.

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