"Lord Dular" Dular was busy poking a severed head on his table when he heard a voice. He didn't have to turn back because he knew who it was, an apprentice he never wanted in the first place but got impressed by the knowledge he possessed about the undeads; Jonah.
Jonah was dragging a dead body that reeked of putrid smell into Dular's workshop. The workshop was a spacious hall yet there was no empty space. Every nook and cranny had something. The wooden racks were lined up against the walls. Jars filled with weird eyeballs, body parts, black goo in bottles, dead bodies with countless cuts, and various tools could be seen in the room.
After getting teleported to this dark mansion, Jonah entered into seclusion according to Dark Queen's instructions. Three months later, he was able to reach Foundation stage level 10 and a few days cultivation away from reaching the Body Refining stage. Meanwhile, during his breaks, he worked with Dular to find out more about the undeads and the Alpha undeads.
Their combined knowledge of undeads enabled them to come up with the most efficient way to kill the undeads. They were just a few days away from finishing the tests and let the Dark Lord and the Dark Queen know about the breakthrough.
This was only a side project though. The main project assigned to Dular by the Dark Lord was to summon more powerful netherels from the Nether Realm. In addition to more powerful netherels, he tasked Dular to find a way to summon more netherels at a time.
Since Dular reached level 7 of Core Formation and got proficient in summoning, he was able to summon fifty netherels at Body Strengthening stage level 9 at a time. If it wasn't for the Dark Lord's order to stop summoning more Netherels than they could fit in the combat hall next door, they would have had an army of Netherels.
Of course, it made sense not to summon more and more Netherels because of two reasons. One, they had no place for the undead army. If they let the undeads roam around in Dark Forest, the guardians would definitely sense the undead presence. Second, Dular could only bound 150 undeads using the book of netherels. If he summoned more, they would wreak havoc, probably rip him apart piece by piece. The second reason led to his current experimentation with Alpha Undeads. The Alpha undeads Michael encountered on the undead island had a certain level of sentience. They controlled the undeads just as Dular without any book of netherels.
"I hope this one dont end up like the last one" Jonah sighed. The body he was dragging was an Alpha. The Dark Lord gave them a potion that paralyzed the undead as well as knocked them out unconscious. Dular and Jonah killed three Alpha undeads in their experiment. They still had two more Alpha undeads and after that, they would have to ask the Dark Lord to capture more Alpha undeads if there were any on the undead Island.
"I'm close, I can feel it. I just need to figure out the telepathic signals produced by the brain of an Alpha. If I could pinpoint the signals and mimic the signals somehow, I can control the undeads like an Alpha" Dular explained while poking the head of the alpha on the table.
The room was dark and gloomy. Only a couple of luminous mushrooms attached to the ceiling were their light source. The faint blue light produced by the mushrooms was barely enough to see where something was at.
The Alpha undeads were apparently sensitive to bright light including sunlight. Any kind of bright light would be harmful to the Alpha. The light sensitivity was not enough to kill an Alpha but it was enough to disorient them by burning their skin.
"So where is the Dark Lord and the Dark Queen? I haven't even seen the floating butler"
"It's Azazel"
"What?" asked Jonah,
"The floating butler, his name is Azazel"
Boom!
The head situated, getting poked by Dular suddenly exploded into bits and pieces. Jonah dashed aside to avoid the brain matter yet he couldn't avoid them completely.
"Fuck!"
Dular cursed as he punched the table with his big fist.
"Why the fuck can't I pinpoint the signals?!"
*******************************
At the moment, Ghost, Gaya, Katherine, and the five men were in front of the metal door with intricate symbols. The door stood almost ten feet tall and six feet wide. The sheer size of the vault made Michael and Gaya excited to see the inside.
Katherine placed her right hand on the silver door,
"Katherine Vincelet Bredia" after Katherine spoke, the ground beneath them lightly shivered as they heard a heavy rumbling noise from the other side of the door. Soon, the thousands of weird symbols on the door sparkled.
A few seconds later, the door gently opened itself to reveal the treasury. However, when the door opened completely, Michael was disappointed, to say the least as he saw nothing but a dimly lit hall with several wooden racks.
"This is underwhelming," Gaya sighed. As a princess, she had some idea where they would have stored all the wealth but she expected at least a few million worths of gems and gold coins.
"This is the treasury?" asked Michael, creasing his brows.
"Of course it is. So according to the agreement and my word, you can pick any two things from here" Katherine seemed to be enjoying their disappointment. They were not idiots to keep all of their wealth in a single place where security was an issue. Like most of the kingdoms in Elon and Ozer, they kept their wealth in Grand Spire bank vaults.
Grand Spire bank was the safest place to keep wealth and precious items. It was like the Gringotts of this world. Instead of goblins, Grand Spire was run by Elves and Dwarves.
A few days ago when the king returned to the capital, he transferred all the remaining wealth in the treasury to the Grand Spire bank branch in Bredia with the help of the Adventurer Guild. Only items that were identified by the scholars and deemed as junk remained in the treasury.
Michael had already took a huge chunk of kingdom Bredia from the king so he did not feel any murderous anger towards the king. After all, in time, everything in this world would belong to him.
He stepped into a dimly lit hall with the hopes of at least finding something interesting.
"System scan everything in the room and let me know if you find something interesting"
[That will cost you 5000 badass points]
The system began to scan the entire hall. Gaya wanted to beat the crap out of the princess. Controlling her impulse to do so, she looked through the items in the wooden rack.
"I pity the people of Bradford" Katherine was unable to keep her mouth shut recalling what happened at the tournament. Her father had never been ashamed like that ever before in his life. Granted, she knew it was partially her fault for what happened. Still, she hated Ghost as he almost killed Andrews and took a huge chunk of land from them.
"Shove that pity up your ass" Gaya mumbled in just enough voice for the princess to hear her but not too loud.
"What did you say?!"
"I said thank you"
The five men behind the princess wanted this to be over as soon as possible before the situation escalated into a fight. They could see Katherine clenching her fist looking at the back of the girl. The girl on the other hand was more focused on rummaging through the items on the rack.
"What is this?" Gaya took an old parchment covered in dust. The parchment looked as though no one touched it for at least a couple of decades.
She opened up the parchment to see a blueprint for a carriage,
"Seriously?" She placed the spell back on the rack with enough for to make a thud sound.
[System has found only one item that could interest the host]
"What? Only one?" Michael asked the system in his mind,
[Yes. All the other items are mediocre at best and most of them are just junk]
"Where is that item you found?"
The system pointed to the item using the environmental Scanning Map as Michael made his way toward the item. One of the racks in front of him had countless parchments and other weird-looking objects covered in dust.
He shoved all the objects aside to pick up a rusty old metal box. It was small as it fit in his palm. The rust covered the symbols on the surface, preventing anyone from recognizing the symbols.
"What the hell is this?"
[It was a portal opener. Now it's just a rusty old box. Only the system can make the box work again. For a price]
"No shit," Katherine noticed the rusty old box in his hand. She used to play with that box when she was little. Her grandfather bought the item in an auction in Awor continent. He believed it held some heaven defying secrets yet after trying to unlock its secret for decades, he realized the box was nothing but just a metal box.
"Portal opener huh? So can I open portals anywhere using this?"
[This portal opener can open a portal to only one place. After fixing the place, the host will be unable to change the portal location]
A smile emerged on his face,
"How much for repairing this?"
[15,000 badass points]
He didn't order the system to repair the box at this moment. He turned back to see the princess staring at him,
"Do you know what this is, Princess Katherine?"
"I'm not your personal scholar" Katherine coldly replied.
Gaya clenched her fist as she felt like knocking Katherin's teeth out of her mouth.
"I'll take this"
Only Gaya noticed the glint of excitement in his eyes. Except for Michael, no one had an idea he was holding a power that could change the world forever.
[Where does the host want the box to open a portal?] The system sounded rather curious,
"Nether Realm"