Ancient Relic (Revised Edition)

At that moment, the monster army had already reached the area. At Mo Fei's command, the monsters immediately began fighting the surrounding adventurers who had been watching the spectacle.

Mo Fei continued forward through the chaos. After crossing a Plaza, he spotted the massive square building in the distance.

This was it!

Mo Fei rushed up to the vault entrance. The vault doors before him were tightly shut, their mithril construction looking incredibly sturdy.

Mo Fei slammed a claw against them. -550! So hard!

He checked their durability: 49,450/50,000. A door actually had fifty thousand durability? How long would it take to tear this thing down? Every second was precious right now.

Fortunately, he could still breathe fire.

He aimed at the doors and unleashed a blast of Archdragon Flame.

The doors had enough surface area that none of the dragon breath's damage went to waste.

(AOE skills could deal stacking damage to large targets.)

Mo Fei crazily spewed flames at the doors. Scorching dragonfire poured forth, crimson at first, then gradually turning blazing white. The fire enhanced by his fully maxed talents sent the doors' durability plummeting, and even mithril-forged doors began to melt under the dragonfire's scorching heat.

It seemed choosing the Ancient Black Dragon advancement had been the right choice. Otherwise, these doors really would not have been easy to open.

As the doors' durability reached zero, Mo Fei tore with his dragon claws, ripping a huge hole straight through them.

He glanced at the adventurers around him, who were still fighting the monsters. The monsters' combat strength varied greatly, but they should be able to stall them for a while.

Without hesitation, Mo Fei charged through the opening.

Upon entering the vault, he found himself in a vast, spacious corridor.

Dozens of Arcane Golems activated at once and Charged at the Black Dragon. Mo Fei swung his claws and swept his tail, smashing every last one into pieces. These elite golems, each with over three thousand health, were formidable enemies to ordinary adventurers, but to Murphys, they were nothing but crops waiting to be harvested.

Still, a vault like this obviously could not have such meager defenses. At the end of the corridor stood a massive golem over twenty meters tall. As Mo Fei approached, its eyes lit up red, and an enormous health bar and boss marker appeared above its head.

Huh, it was actually a boss-class combat unit.

Vault Guardian (Magical Colossus), Level 70, Disaster Tier Rank 1, HP 60,000.

Vault Guardian (Magical Colossus): "Intruder detected. Combat protocol initiating—Destruction Beam ready to fire!"

Two red beams shot toward him, striking Mo Fei simultaneously. The Destruction Beams pierced through his dragon scales, leaving two scorched marks on the Black Dragon's body.

-

1719!

-

1658!

Huh, the damage was pretty high.

Golems usually had extremely high resistances, so Mo Fei did not breathe fire. Instead, he directly used Dragon Assault, slamming headfirst into the golem's chest.

Boom! -3285!

The violent impact left the golem swaying unsteadily.

Looking at its sixty thousand health, he knew taking it down would probably take some time. Mo Fei had no time to get tangled up with it, but fortunately, he had studied the weaknesses of all kinds of monsters in detail. A golem's weakness was generally its energy core.

Mo Fei thrust his dragon claw directly into the golem's chest, where its power source was located.

Normally, Dragon Claw Swipe could not reach such a high position, but Mo Fei was completely unaware of that at the moment.

Crack! His sharp dragon claws pierced straight through the protective plating on the golem's chest. He pulled and tore at its mithril shell. The colossus seemed to sense the threat, and its two massive mechanical arms repeatedly pounded the Black Dragon's body. -515! -648! -769! -887!

Enduring the increasingly painful blunt impacts, Mo Fei gave a hard yank. With a ripping sound, he tore off the armor plate and exposed the enormous arcane crystal within. Without hesitation, he ripped the thing out with one claw and crushed it.

Boom! -56715 (Critical Strike)!

Vault Guardian (Magical Colossus): "Protocol error—termination protocol cannot be executed. Protocol malfunctioning, malfunctioning, malfunctioning, malfunctioning, malfunctioning..."

Boom! The massive colossus crashed to the ground. Critical Strikes really were satisfying.

As the golem fell, a metal door appeared behind it. Mo Fei tore it open with one claw, then shrank his massive body into humanoid form and walked inside.

Before entering, he did not forget to turn off his livestream plug-in. He was not worried about the viewers discovering that he had looted the vault, but transferring the treasures next would require exploiting a system loophole. He did not want to set a bad example for the kids.

Inside the enormous vault stood two rows of ornate display cases, containing the finest treasures among the countless precious artifacts Dalaran had collected over thousands of years.

Mo Fei did not waste any words and immediately began stuffing things into his inventory.

Sea Lord Scepter—good stuff! Book of Radia—good stuff! Void Grimoire—good stuff! Arcane Crystal Robe—good stuff! Temila's Arcane Crown—it was even a quest item. Even better stuff!

After looting over half the vault in one go, Mo Fei reached its far end. The place was completely empty, seemingly containing nothing but a bare wall. Yet when his gaze swept across it, the appraisal skill granted by Ancient Dragon Wisdom detected an illusion spell placed upon that wall.

Mo Fei kicked it, and a section of the wall instantly vanished, revealing a passage leading downward.

Anticipation immediately rose within him. Following the passage down, he found another door. The dark-gold door seemed to be forged from arcanite, with six keyholes on it. It appeared that six keys had to be used simultaneously to open it.

There was no need to guess. Those six keys were most likely in the hands of the Kirin Tor Council's six archmages.

It looked like the real good stuff was inside. Mo Fei felt a surge of excitement.

If an ordinary adventurer had encountered this thing, they could only stare at it helplessly. Obtaining all six keys would undoubtedly be an Epic Tier task, and even trying to force it open would be difficult. Arcanite was incredibly strong; ordinary attacks probably could not even break its defense.

But for Mo Fei, it was not much of a problem.

He directly pulled the Giant-Smasher Hammer from his inventory and swung it at the vault door!

One hammer blow landed. -555!

He checked the door's durability again. It was actually as high as 20,000.

Looks like this would take some effort.

Thinking that, Mo Fei raised the hammer again with all his strength.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Even with the Giant-Smasher Hammer's Armor Break property and siege damage, plus Mo Fei's absurdly high Strength, it still took him more than three minutes to smash open the vault. Mo Fei excitedly walked through the door.

But when he saw what was inside the secret chamber, Mo Fei froze. What was this thing?

On a stone platform stood a strange dragon-shaped statue.

The statue was carved from some unknown stone. It looked somewhat weathered, carrying an ancient, timeworn air. Yet this ancientness was not ancient by human standards, but ancient by Dragonkind standards.

Its exact age was completely unimaginable. Unlike any ordinary Dragonkind Mo Fei knew, this statue had two pairs of dragon wings. The dragon horns atop its head layered upon one another, while its scales possessed patterns and textures like stone. Its features differed from every kind of Dragonkind Mo Fei recognized, and he had no idea whether this was artistic embellishment or whether such dragons truly existed in Skyworld.

[Ancient Dragon Stone Statue (Ancient Relic)

Quest Item: One of a kind.

Use: Decipher the mysterious text on the statue to trigger a Core Storyline.

Item Description: A stone statue of an Ancient Dragon. Its exact age can no longer be verified. Ancient Dragons were the progenitors of Dragonkind in myth and legend. It was said that during the Dark Age when the universe had just been born, the immortal Ancient Dragons once ruled the world. However, the Dragon God fell, the Ancient Dragons perished, and all legends were lost to the river of history.]

There were also four lines of inscriptions on the statue's base, written in Ancient Dragon Language. Ordinary people would not be able to understand them, but Mo Fei was an Ancient Black Dragon, so he could naturally discern their meaning. They read:

[Sky Country, Ancient Dragon's Sorrow, God's End, Dragon Feast's Demise]

He just did not know what they specifically meant.

Mo Fei had never expected such a thing to be hidden in the vault's secret room. He had originally thought it would contain some divine artifact or a legendary magic tome, but instead it was a statue. Moreover, this was the first time he had seen an item suffix like "Ancient Relic." What exactly was this thing?

The mysterious text on the statue should refer to those lines of Ancient Dragon Language.

A Core Storyline... It sounded pretty awesome. This was the first time he had heard of such a thing, and he had no idea what would happen after triggering it. Everything else could be sold, but he definitely had to keep this. He would need to study it carefully later.

.