Gleam [Karma Cultivator Isekai] - Chapter 97: Imagine

Chance stood at the edge of the room next to Bella, studying the riches before them. It was impossible to know what the traps did or how long they’d been there. There was always the possibility that they’d broken down in the years and weren’t even a threat anymore.

It wasn’t a risk that Chance wanted to take, even with his luck. He didn’t want to find out that the trap was just a giant explosion that brought the island down on top of them. That would have been a fairly stupid way to trap something, but it would certainly send a message.

“What should we do?” Bella asked.

“Maybe the things on the floor,” Chance suggested after a moment of consideration. “It looks like a few of them have auras as well, and they’re probably not trapped. Maybe the wires on them broke already.”

Bella squinted into the room and nodded. “That’s a good idea. Just be careful when walking around in there. If the weapons are trapped, then its possible there are triggers on the ground as well.”

Chance grimaced. The heavy layer of dust that covered everything made it difficult to see if any of the stones beneath their feet were different from the others. If one of them had small runes on it, there was no way he’d see them in time.

Both of them were well aware that there was no pressing need to take something from the armory, but they’d been searching for so long that Chance was reluctant to leave the island without something to show for it beyond a questionable ring.

That didn’t mean he wanted to get himself or Bella killed for a sword that would probably end up getting sold, though. Chance rubbed his chin. There wasn’t any way he could think of to get into the room and take something out without risking triggering a trap.

“Maybe I should do it after all?” Bella suggested. “If a trap does go off, I’m the most likely to survive, luck or not.”

“Unless it’s a giant hole and you fall a thousand feet down,” Chance replied. “Then you’ll be stuck down there.”

Bella paled. “I didn’t think about that. What about Ocie? She doesn’t actually get injured if that golem of hers is damaged, right? It’s just controlled by Essence.”

“That’s… a good point, actually.” Chance looked at his bracelet. “I’m not sure if Ocie is willing to work with us right now, though.”

The bracelet was still. Bella scrunched her nose in annoyance. “Is she really throwing a tantrum? Isn’t she the literal city of Gleam? Seems a little old for that, doesn’t she?”

A crack split the ground before Chance’s feet. He took a quick step back as stone bubbled out from within it, forming into a rocky, humanoid form. The golem straightened out to Chance’s height. It was Ocie’s closest rendition yet to a normal human, although all the features were still a little off where they should have been and its limbs were just a little too gangly.

“I am not having a tantrum,” Ocie ground out. Something about the way she spoke seemed off to Chance, and it took him a moment to put his finger on what it was. Her mouth moved with every word, but not in the proper shapes.

“Do you want to give us a hand?” Chance asked. “There are some potentially useful things in here, but I saw what I’m pretty sure is a trap on one of the swords, so there might be more in the room. Your body can’t be injured when it’s in this form, can it?”

“Not by traps,” Ocie replied with a scoff as she turned to head into the armory. “I can get them.”

“Hold on,” Chance said before the golem could step into the room. Ocie’s head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees to look back at him.

“What?”

“We don’t know what kind of traps those are. What if it’s a poison gas or anything that reaches past the armory? Bella and I could get caught up in it as well.”

Ocie crossed her arms. “I can build a solid stone wall in front of the passage so nothing escapes the armory. Your idea of destroying the entire island just because there’s a thief in the armory is ludicrous. Nobody would do that.”

Chance and Bella exchanged a glance.

“Okay, you’ve probably got a point,” Chance admitted. “Let’s do that, then. Do you need me to point out the useful items?”

Ocie scoffed. “No. I’ll just take everything down from the walls and pile it up, triggering any traps I see in the process. By the time I’m done, the area will be completely safe.”

“That’s one way to do it,” Bella said. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Like you said, this isn’t my real body. I can’t be injured by anything other than direct damage to my Essence or soul, and there’s absolutely no possibility of a mere trap being rigged to defend against an artifact such as I. Stand back.”

Ocie stepped forward and rock bubbled up behind her like boiling water. It clambered up the wall, sealing the armory off from Bella and Chance within seconds. The light coming off Chance’s gold mist immediately brightened their immediate area as it had nowhere left to shine.

Several seconds passed. The ground shuddered. Chance jumped and Bella sent him a nervous glance. Another shudder rocked the ground, this time followed by a deep whump from the other side of the rock.

Wind roared, and something sharp scraped along the stone before them. Several explosions shook the island. Then there was silence.

Chance swallowed and knocked on the stone wall. “Ocie? Are you okay?”

There was another series of loud crashes, followed by one more explosion that went off with such force that the rocks protecting them cracked. Bella shoved Chance back, stepping in front of him, but the wall didn’t fall.

They waited for several seconds. No more explosions came. Bella nudged the wall with her foot. It crumbled apart and sank back into the earth, letting them into the armory once more. Chance’s mouth dropped open.

It didn’t look anything like what it had less than a minute ago. Huge, blackened streaks scorched the floor and giant blades had fallen from the ceiling all over the room, piercing deep into he ground.

Ocie stood in the center, surrounded by a pile of smashed and warped weapons and armor. Her stone body was charred a charcoal black and one of her arms stuck out of the ceiling, where it had been pierced by a spear.

About half a dozen items sat on the ground in front of her, completely undamaged. They were also entirely dust free. Chance cleared his throat.

“Ocie?”

“The traps may have been slightly more extensive than I anticipated,” Ocie said, reaching up and pulling her arm off the spear. She wedged it back onto her body. “I hope you didn’t want any of the things that weren’t artifacts.”

“Not anymore,” Bella said, hiding a laugh. “Is it safe to come in?”

“There aren’t any traps left to be activated. I made sure of that. I’m unsure of the artifacts safety, though. I would refrain from touching anything with your bare skin until you can more thoroughly examine their purpose.”

Chance took a step into the room. Ash and cracked stone crunched beneath his feet, but nothing else happened. Chance wasn’t sure if that was a surprise or not. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. At least there wasn’t any more dust anywhere. It had all been scorched away.

He walked up to join Ocie and Bella joined him in looking down at the pile of artifacts. There were two chest plates, a shield, several short swords, a morning star, a helmet, and a metal belt.

“Well,” Chance said. “Now that we’ve actually got it, I no longer know what to do. I don’t think I can fit all these in my shirt.”

“You have two shirts,” Ocie pointed out.

Bella scrunched her nose. “I’d rather not take my shirt off if I can avoid it, thank you very much. What about you? Would the artifacts have negative affects if you touched them?”

“No,” Ocie replied. She cleared her throat. “Not to them.”

“What’s that mean?” Bella asked.

“You’d absorb them, wouldn’t you?” Chance guessed. “Kind of like how Yamish was planning to use you.”

Ocie’s inclined her head. “Yes. I, ah, may have absorbed a few already. On accident. None of them did anything useful.”

Chance shook his head. “You know what, I don’t even want to know what they did. I guess we can call it payment for tanking all the traps for us.”

“How many did you absorb?” Bella looked around the room. “There were a lot of weapons here before.”

“Don’t answer that,” Chance said through a chuckle. “I don’t think we want to know.”

“Fair enough,” Bella admitted. “Okay, so Ocie is banned from touching any more artifacts. Should I actually just use my shirt? It wouldn’t even let us bring that much more, just one or two things.”

“Don’t do that yet,” Chance said hurriedly. “There’s no need for us to take all of this, is there?”

Bella blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Well, there are just two of us. I don’t really have any plans of using armor or a normal sword, they don’t fit my fighting style and I much prefer my urumi. The helmet isn’t great for me either. I want to be able to see what I’m doing.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t need armor or a helmet either,” Bella said. “But that’s not the point. We could sell them for a lot of gold or trade them for different artifacts.”

“Sure. That’s why we could take some. But we can leave some things for other people to take if they get this far too.”

Bella stared at Chance. “You just want to… leave behind artifacts? After all this?”

“Well, not all of them. We’d take the ones we wanted. But do we really need two chest pieces and a bunch of swords?”

“What about getting the money to find your parents?”

Chance frowned. “I do need a lot of money for that, but if we go around carrying a ton of gear, we’re probably going to get attacked. Then we might have to drop everything to escape. If we just take a smaller amount, it’ll be easier to avoid too much attention.”

Bella opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked back down to the pile of artifacts and let out a soft huff. “That’s an annoyingly good point. You do realize we’re basically leaving behind what could be thousands of gold though, right?”

“Better that than losing all of it.”

“I could eat the rest,” Ocie offered. “It won’t go to waste.”

“We should leave some for other people that come through,” Chance insisted. “Imagine how disappointing it would be to get to the island and go through a bunch of difficulty, only to find out that there wasn’t anything here.”

“What difficulty? You already killed the Essence Eater.”

“You already got your part. We aren’t in a situation where we need to take everything we see and leave nothing for anyone else. Karma will pay us back.”

Ocie crossed her arms. The one that had been speared snapped and fell off, cracking as it hit the ground. Ocie sighed and picked the halves back up with her free hand, pushing them back into place.

“You’re just saying that because you’re a Karma cultivator. What we do doesn’t affect you.”

“I’m going to follow Chance’s suggestion,” Bella said. “He’s right. I’ll take the shield, then. Nothing else looks like it’ll be useful to me, as I don’t want to wear armor or a helmet. At least a shield could synergize with my Essence.”

“Then I’ll take the belt,” Chance decided, using his shirt to pick up the belt and dropping it into his case of vials. He then wrapped his shirt around the shield and handed the package to Bella. “There. I don’t think you’ve got any good way to carry it, so we’ll use this for now.”

“Thanks,” Bella said, taking it from him with an embarrassed grin. She stuffed the shield into her travel bag. It didn’t fully fit, but it didn’t look like it would fall out anytime soon either. “I didn’t think we’d run into anything like this or I would have brought something.”

“Live and learn,” Chance said with a shrug. “I think we’re done here, then. Let’s head back to the tower and get off this island. There’s still a good amount of time left before the Ancient Realm closes, so maybe we can find someone that has a spare shirt and find some more things before it ends.”

“No complaints here,” Bella said. They both looked at Ocie. The golem let out a heavy sigh.

“Fine. I won’t take anything else. Good luck.” Ocie crumbled to pieces.

Chance chuckled. He and Bella started up the stairs, leaving the rest of the artifacts in a pile on the ground behind them.