Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“Hurry up, open it!”
“Everyone start working on this, now!”
No one cared that one slave had died. As soon as the body of the slave who fell in was retrieved, it was tossed aside. All the workers were redirected to the hole in the ground and resumed digging. Soon they found a large domed building. However, they found that their progress was stalled by a large rock that blocked the entire entrance.
A Bloodline Knight appeared. He stopped before the rock, holding a hammer almost as tall as he was. Using his power, he swung the hammer and shattered the rock. After the dust settled, the entrance was revealed to everyone. The knight opened the gate, revealing a world where no one had set foot in a thousand years. A winding staircase leading down into the mountains appeared.
“Prepare yourselves,” ordered the middle-aged nobleman that was in charge, Viscount Tena.
Everyone quickly prepared themselves for the descent. After an hour, the soldiers that were supposed to descend into the mountains stood in front of the gate, waiting for further orders.
“Where are the torches?!”
“You! Go first!” the nobleman roared. His guards drew their swords and pointed them at the slave shaking in fear. Seeing no other choices, the slave grabbed a torch and began his descent. His footsteps echoed in the dark, empty hall. Seeing that there was no danger, the soldiers and the nobleman began following the slave.
Suddenly, the slave who was leading the way stepped on air. He fell into a trap and was impaled by a spear. The soldier behind him was knocked off of the staircase by a large rock that rolled out of another hidden trap.
“A trap!”
“This is the curse of the Golden King!” one of the workers cried. “We can’t do this!”
“We are offending the gods!”
The nobleman raised his sword and cut down one of the screaming slaves. “There’s no curse!” he bellowed. “Those are all false rumors! You belong to my family and I am your lord! You will all follow my orders!”
Surrounded by a dozen trained knights and three awakened Bloodline Knights, the slaves couldn’t do anything to defy the viscount’s orders. They kept going, triggering more traps along the way. They pressed on at the expense of human lives. Once in a while, screams of slaves who stumbled into traps would echo in the dark, dank mountain. At the bottom of the stairway was a long hallway.
“Look!” someone called. “There’s something on the wall!”
Tena took a torch and inspected the hallway they were in. Under the flickering light of the torch, he saw that the walls of the hallway were covered in murals, depicting different people and events. He studied them, his fingers grazing the walls lightly.
“I can’t believe it.” He turned to his men and announced loudly, “This isn’t just a grave from the Golden Dynasty! This is the grave of King Ahenaten! The first king of men!”
Everyone stared at the murals in shock. To them, Ahenaten belonged to the early history, to the legends and songs and epics. Seeing history unfolding right in front of them made these men very excited.
Tena led his men deeper down the hall. “Look, these depict scenes of the Golden Dynasty. The Battle of Red River Plain, the foundation of his empire, him slaying the Orc King Costa, and…”
He saw a statue of a god. It had a mask with the sigil of the sun and he was giving a young boy a sword and a bag of seeds. Everyone gasped at this.
Tena gripped the torch in shock. “So it’s true? The Golden King really did meet a god. This is the Sword of the King from the legends. According to legends, Ahenaten’s family had the golden bloodline given by this God–Archangel Faross!”
He stared at the God in the murals in a daze. A beat later, he finally turned around. “Hurry, let’s go! If the legends are true, the Sword of the King must be somewhere in here! According to legend, the reason the Golden Dynasty fell was because Ahenaten took the Sword of the King into his tomb. Whoever finds the sword will unite the Alen Continent and be the true king of the world!”
The group pressed on through several chambers full of traps until they finally reached where Ahenaten was laid to rest. The moment that the gate was opened and the torches’ light touched the room, everyone was blinded by a flash of golden light.
“It’s gold!”
“This is all gold!”
“So much gold!”
Tena laughed maniacally, his heart pounding in his chest. Since his grandfather’s generation, his family had dedicated themselves to finding this tomb. After all these years, he had finally found the hidden treasures of the Golden Dynasty.
“Hurry, light all the candles!”
When the candles were lit and the entire chamber was illuminated, everyone gaped. Platinum, silver, and diamonds and crystals of all colors covered the entire room.
The most eye-catching was the coffin on a raised platform in the center of the room. It was made completely out of gold with hundreds of colorful gems. The opulent designs and golden shine stole their breaths.
The people waded through the gold coins. Their feet seemed to sink into the treasure; some As even seemed to slip right into their boots. Everyone stared at the treasure with gaping mouths, their thoughts completely taken by the treasure.
Instead of looking at the treasure around him, Tena was staring at the coffin. He ran right up to it. “Go, open it.”
“Are you sure, my lord?” one of the men asked. “This is the Golden King’s coffin. He’d interacted with God before. Do we really want to open it? Wouldn’t that be…”
Tena didn’t care. He just wanted to verify if the legendary Sword of the King really existed. “I said, open it” he roared.
The knights glanced at each other, then walked up to the coffin and opened it. Inside was an old man wearing a golden mask. He held a longsword in his hands. Even after thousands of years, the body still looked alive.
Fear creeped into everyone’s hearts. Especially since they were in a dark underground tunnel, the strange atmosphere ate away at them. As soon as outside air touched the body, it slowly weathered and turned to smoke.
This made everyone even more fearful, but Tena did not notice that at all. “What are you scared of? He’s dead. What can he do?”
Tena stared at the sword. “It really is here, the legendary sword given by the gods!”
He picked it up and slid the sword from the elegant golden sheath. White light flashed in everyone’s vision. He struck his guard’s sword with it. The guard’s sword snapped in half, but the sword in his hand didn’t even have a nick.
Tena laughed heartily. “It really is the Sword of the King, a sword from the gods. Even after thousands of years, it is still sturdy, white, and sharp, as if it had just been forged. I can’t believe it’s in my hands now!”
Suddenly, another thing in the coffin drew his attention. He didn’t know what it was, but if it was important enough to be buried with Ahenaten, then it must be something as powerful as the sword. It might be at the same level as the Sword of the King.
What kind of treasure can it be that was as powerful as the sword? The sword was a gift from the gods, so had Ahenaten been gifted with something else from the gods too?
In addition to Tena, this thought also hit every other person in the chamber.