“I’m here to see my vault,” Melia began brightly, as if the last several minutes were merely a bad dream and didn’t cast a dragon-sized shadow over all the other patrons.

  “Indeed,” Jonathan chuckled, “As one does at the bank.”

  He wasn’t being mean or ridiculing her, and Melia also found it funny. She supposed a real bank had many other services to offer, like loans and financing, but to her, the only thing she’d ever think of when visiting the Bank of Horizon was as her giant stash of stuff.

  “But, ah, how do we go about doing this? I haven’t been here in…a long time. And can I bring my friends?”

  Jessica and Y’cennia twitched, having done their best to appear as statues, making Jonathan chuckle.

  “But of course, my lady. It is your vault, and yours to use as you see fit. Aside from an attendant to open the vault, only those who you allow may come inside.”

  As for the first part of her question, by way of answer, he pulled out two of those slates she had used moments before to share her information with the bank. They were then connected together by a small box with a slot on top, much like the opening in a mailbox. With one hand, Jonathan held the box steady, while he placed his own palm on the slate facing him, offering the other slate toward Melia, inviting her to do the same.

  She did her best to tamp down on her bubbling curiosity at something clearly magical and placed her hand on the tablet. It looked small and childish compared to the banker’s gnarled and weathered hand, but as soon as her palm was on the crystal, the scanner lit up once more. This time it scanned on both sides, apparently needing authorization from somebody on the bank’s side as well as the customer’s. Perhaps it was a security measure, Melia mused.

  It only took a second, and as soon as the light faded from the tablets, it transferred into the slot in the box. Then, a thick, black metal protrusion started rising out.

  It was soon apparent the key, because that was what it was, was very much not normal. Even Jonathan, who clearly knew what he was expecting, raised an appreciative brow, while Melia heard several gasps from those around her, obviously eavesdropping. She caught a teller in the next window staring with her mouth wide open, her own customer entirely forgotten.

  “What in the name of….”

  “Gods below…”

  Melia heard her two companions mutter behind her and honestly she agreed.

  Calling it a key was like calling an industrial tractor with a bucket attachment a shovel.

  The box the key came out of was clearly some sort of magical device, because there was no way the key could ever fit inside it otherwise. It was made of some incredibly dense, pitch black metal and longer than Melia’s arm. She could probably use it as a blunt weapon if she really wanted. The top of the key, wrought of that strange black metal, was twisted into the shape of a dragon’s head, its serrated jaws open wide, with a bright red ruby cut in the shape of a flame set firmly in the center. The barrel of the key was simple, if thick and sturdy, and the teeth looked comically oversimplified compared to the head, consisting of only three raised teeth. The first was of middle height, the middle was the shortest, and the last was the tallest.

  But when Melia took a closer look, she could see intricate etching along the face of each tooth, and she could smell the magic resting inside it, even if she couldn’t see the runes.

  No, nobody would be picking the lock to her vault any time soon.

  Jonathan held the monstrosity in both hands, slightly shorter than his forearm, and studied it gravely before offering it to Melia. It kind of felt like she was getting a “key to the city”, one of those giant keys movies and stories showcased when the hero saved the day that didn’t actually unlock anything. Except, with how evil this thing looked, she wondered what kind of city she “saved”. More like the key to the dark lord’s lair…which she did her best not to think about, considering her class.

  Jonathan led Melia and the girls to the far end of the room, to a subdued looking door with several more guards posted next to it. At first Melia wondered why they weren’t heading to the obvious vault on display in the back wall of the building, but feeling every single eye in the bank trained solely on her and her party, she was glad they weren’t.

  Through the door and down a small flight of stairs, they came into a hallway, just as non-descript as any other corridor Melia would think to pass inside the inner workings of a financial institution, until they stopped at a seemingly random door.

  Outside the door was the teller from earlier, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there as he sweated nervously, and a man in his fifties wearing a very fine suit.

  “Mr. Benton, you’ve come,” said Jonathan.

  “Keeper Jonathan, I’m surprised to see you handling this yourself.”

  “As if I could leave this to anybody else!” he scoffed.

  Melia found the exchange curious. From what she could tell, this Mr. Benton fellow was likely the manager, while Jonathan was simply a half-retired employee with extreme seniority.

  Michael, the teller, did his best to fuse himself into the surrounding wall invisibly, so Melia decided to take pity on him and treat him like the air.

  Mr. Benton opened the door, and the group walked into a small room. An antechamber for the real vaults. In front of them stood a circular door, etched with countless glowing runes and symbols, with a giant circular lever mechanism reminiscent of the helm’s wheel on a ship. In the center of the wheel was a hole, and it was there that Melia inserted the key.

  …or she wanted to.

  She stood before the vault and stared up at the thing, easily twelve feet in diameter. The keyhole itself was several feet above her head. For a brief moment she contemplated jumping, wondering if she could stick the key into the hole and turn it all in one go. She certainly had the Dexterity for it.

  Instead she turned to Jessica, caught in a trance staring at the vault, and raised her arms.

  With a little help she had the key at the right height and found, despite the key’s monstrous appearance and unwieldy size, it turned quite smoothly.

  Not only that, but the gigantic door swung outward of its own accord, solving the problem of how they were going to get the leverage to open it. Brilliant white light beamed out from behind the crack as the vault slowly unsealed, as if lit by hundreds of fluorescent lamps or a miniature sun, and Melia couldn’t hide her smile.

  Her vault! They were about to enter her vault!

  Her excitement dimmed very briefly as the door swung even wider, far enough for them to peer inside, and they were not instantly greeted by a towering mountain of gold coins.

  Part of Melia wondered exactly how much of her old bank had transferred over, wondering how much was lost.

  As soon as the door swung fully open, coming to rest in a catch with a satisfying clunk, her smile returned. She glanced up at all of her companions. Jessica and Y’cennia had a sort of nervous, excited energy about them, while the manager and young teller stared at the open vault with undisguised awe. Jonathan, for his part, looked incredibly smug, as if reveling at the outcome of some successful inside joke. He alone didn’t seem surprised in the least at what was inside the door, and, Melia reasoned, if he truly was the one who helped her access her storage all those years ago, he would know what it held.

  Everyone stood rooted in place, so Melia took it upon herself to lead the party in.

  “What…is this?” Michael asked at length. Melia resisted the urge to blurt out my vault, duh.

  “I’ve seen certain vaults enlarged due to system expansion,” Mr. Benton muttered, “But those belong to ancient families or prestigious guilds. Not an individual. Nothing like this. At most they have a room or two, not….”

  He waved his hand vaguely toward the entrance and Melia understood. Her vault led, not into the expected pile of money, but another hallway. Pristine white tiles, possibly luminous themselves, lined a hallway six feet wide and nine feet tall. It ran thirty feet in length from the entrance to the end, where it seemed to open up into a larger chamber, and was lined with ten mahogany doors, five on each side. Melia was about to head to the first door, but after taking a single step inside, her attention was immediately stolen by the fascinating rune array pulsing in a circular motion inside the vault door itself, like the inner workings of a precision, jeweled pocket watch.

  This was incredibly powerful magic, maybe even stronger than anything she could ever hope to make, which was definitely saying something. It was likely made and maintained by the system itself, though she did wonder who the genius who first laid down the foundation might have been. The original owner or creator of the bank? Who could say.

  The first intriguing part was that this vault wasn’t actually her vault at all.

  Or rather, the vault itself didn’t exist in the physical realm, and any number of keys could be used in that door to open portals to any number of vaults.

  And, while her specific vault may have been massive, it wasn’t taking up any real space at the bank. The entirety of any vault, from the size of a shoebox to an entire stadium, existed solely inside the width of the door itself.

  Meaning, she really, really didn’t need to worry about thieves breaking in, ever.

  They could blow the whole city to kingdom come and it would remain intact, if she could use her key on any door that contained that lattice array.

  “Melia?” Jessica shook her from her musings. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Hm? Sorry! I was admiring the spell work on the door. It’s very impressive.”

  Four sets of eyes traveled to the door and stared at it blankly.

  “…spells?” Y’cennia asked.

  “Ah,” Melia scratched her chin awkwardly. “Perhaps you need certain sight to see it,” she said, thinking that maybe high level [Mages] and [Enchanters] likely could.

  “As expected of a dragon,” Jonathan wheezed, looking satisfied. The eyes, previously locked on the seemingly flat and innocent surface of the door, snapped to him. He took on a rather grave and ominous look, staring at his coworkers.

  “You enter the hoard of a dragon, gentlemen. Burn the sight into your eyes, you may never again have the opportunity to witness such treasures.”

  Melia groaned. While she wasn’t hiding the fact she was a dragon, she wasn’t going around, openly advertising her true form either. She didn’t really care to explain it to two complete strangers, either, and decided she was going to ignore any baffled looks or questions the teller and manager sent her way. For the briefest of moments she wondered how Jonathan knew, but if he really was that old, and she really did have some sort of presence here in the past…he would have seen her loitering in the square outside, blocking the entrances to all the other buildings. It was a fantastic pastime.

  Melia was more worried about Jessica and Y’cennia, who were staring at Jonathan with looks of shock and alarm.

  “Come, my lady,” Jonathan said, beckoning inside. “What may this humble servant help you retrieve?”

  He was laying it on a bit thick, in her opinion, but if he was going to be weird, that was his problem, not hers. Apparently he waited a century to let somebody like her into a vault like this again, so who was she to judge?

  Melia finally took a step inside and walked to the first door, a wide smile blooming across her face.

  Aside from being impeccably clean, pristine, and beautiful, the vault hallway was no different from any common corridor one could find inside an apartment or inn. Instead of room numbers or nameplates, each door had an intricate carving set into the rich wood, and Melia let out a gasp as soon as she saw them.

  In the game, her bank was fully upgraded, with 10 separate tabs, each maxed with hundreds of slots of storage. Each symbol in each of the 10 doors in the vault corresponded to the same symbol Melia had chosen for her tabs in the game.

  Her organizational scheme included tabs for mining goods such as ores and gems, tailoring supplies like cloth and silks, and leather working goods and supplies like hides, skins, and assorted other materials. A tab for [Cooking], a tab for [Enchanting], and a tab for [Alchemy]. A tab for all of her herbs, plants, and wood. A tab dedicated to all of her professions and crafting classes that didn’t fit in nicely with the other things, like her [Mining] picks, [Logging] axes, workbenches and stations, as well as her [Engineering] supplies. One entire tab devoted to stuff that was, in the game, entirely junk meant only to be sold to vendors, but had memorable flavor text or funny anecdotes regarding their origins, and other things she simply found nostalgic. Finally, there was the main tab, the largest. It housed all of her armor and weapons, all of the sets she collected over the years, held onto because she couldn’t bear to throw them away or sell them off. Not even long after the game introduced an integrated cosmetic system that meant she no longer needed to lug them in her inventory to show them off when wearing them.

  All of those tabs were now doors, with the added intrigue of the open chamber at the end of the hall. Five doors on her left and five doors on her right. She looked up at the one closest to her and couldn’t stop the grin. The symbol carved beautifully into the door was a pick striking a stone. Despite her first class wearing cloth armor and not needing any metals, [Mining] was her first gathering profession. No better place to start than here. She turned toward Jessica, who she still needed to open the doors, as despite being her vault the doors were built on a human scale.

  “Shall we?” she asked, and they stepped in, one by one.

  Jessica’s shoulders relaxed slightly as she opened the door, unsure of what she’d find within. The relief was fleeting. As soon as her eyes understood what they were looking at, her whole body went rigid once more.

  There were vaults, and then there were vaults.

  And then there was whatever the hell this was.

  To put it in perspective, the size alone shouldn’t be possible. At least not to her understanding of wealth. Jessica didn’t have a vault of her own, though she did have an account where she could store the few meager coppers she could afford to set aside and didn’t want to risk getting stolen. And she had seen other people’s vaults, if not exactly been allowed to roam around them as she was now.

  The Barnes’ vault, Ellesea’s family, was one such case. An old and wealthy family, they were a prime example of the nobility. Not the bottom and certainly not the top, but a good representation of what one might find if they simply thought: noble.

  Jessica had seen it from beyond the vault door, and it was a modest room the size of the schoolhouse she had attended as a child.

  It was also filled with what one actually expected to see in a vault: priceless paintings and works of art, golden candelabras and silver tea sets. Furnishings and heirlooms. One or two suits of armor, yes, and a magical artifact or two.

  Not piles and piles of…rocks.

  But even Jessica, clueless as she was, understood the value of sheer numbers.

  And calling what she was staring at a mere “pile” was like calling a mountain a slight bump.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  They had entered a door in a hallway (something Jessica already understood was unnatural, having never heard of a vault with a hall), and there was no possible way this room could fit beside the next, due to the sheer size of this room alone. She could wave away the magical nonsense of expanded space and rooms bigger on the inside than out, this was a vault after all, governed by the system.

  But the size alone left her reeling, as it could easily fit multiple warehouses side by side. Hundreds of feet long though not quite as wide, she counted several dozen piles of rocks before she lost count.

  And the piles. They seemed to be measured in tonnage.

  For instance, the closest grouping. Four piles of iron ore (something she would never dream of putting into a vault), each as tall as a single story home.

  One pile alone could feed an entire guild of smithies for months. Possibly years.

  Jessica never considered ore to be valuable, not in the same sense as minted coin or cut jewels.

  But seeing the mountains of ore gave her a different perspective.

  If she, or anybody else for that matter, wished to buy all of that?

  Well, certainly they would need a fortune, that was for sure.

  And that was only the first section.

  She could also see copper, tin, silver, and gold.

  Those were the ones her basic [Identify] could handle, though the description was basic and lacking.

  And honestly, Jessica was glad it didn’t tell her more: she nearly felt light headed when her eyes landed on the pile of raw gold taller than her.

  No wonder Melia insisted on paying for the carriage ride.

  And that was just considering the piles of raw ore, not the neatly stacked towers of smelted ingots.

  The towers were not nearly as large nor as plentiful, but there was still enough to outfit entire armies with weapons and armor…and then gild them into uselessness with silver and gold.

  Jessica’s eyes settled on a greenish ore sitting next to a stack of blueish-white ingots and she needed to steady herself. Mithril. Her head felt light and small spots danced in her vision.

  She quickly gathered herself as she took a deep gulp of saliva alongside a raspy breath.

  She had never heard, never dreamed of a collection of the rare metal so vast. It was perhaps not the strongest material for armor, though it was certainly better than steel, but its real value was as an excellent magical conductor and conduit. With this pile, every enchanter and artificer in the city could spend the rest of their lives in contented bliss crafting mithril items every day and still they wouldn’t run out.

  Jessica glanced at the piles further down, the ones she couldn’t identify, and had to look away. Purples, reds, dull and sharp greys that glistened with unreal energy and light. She didn’t need to put a name to any of them to know they were rare. And powerful. She looked away, unable to stand the sight of such…clinical wealth.

  Would she feel different if it was ostentatiously displayed? If some great king of smiths lorded his wealth in a gaudy show of arrogance?

  At least then she would have an outlet in which to direct her mixed feelings. They would be mostly scorn, with a dash of jealousy and ridicule.

  Here, with everything cleanly and categorically ordered as if it was merely a personal warehouse or, dare she say it, shed? Something not really meant for anybody else’s eyes, only designed for the ease of use of the owner when they wanted to find and retrieve what was theirs?

  She felt small and very vulnerable. As if all this overwhelming wealth was merely something to be glanced at and maybe used.

  An afterthought, at best.

  And if something like this could be waved aside as trivial and mundane…what was she? With her handful of gold to her name.

  Jessica watched the tiny gnome as she approached a giant pile of limestone. Melia reached out a hand and countless blocks disappeared into her inventory, enough to fill a normal person’s many times over but it didn’t put a dent into the pile.

  Jessica couldn’t understand how the gnome’s mind worked. And then there was the troubling matter with the ancient looking banker, who seemed to think Melia really was a dragon. He was treating her as such, or at the very least like some sort of royalty, and if this was what he had to deal with every time Melia came to visit, Jessica could understand how he’d become that way. There was clearly a difference between her and everyone else present.

  Not that Melia understood that fact, or if she did, she kept it well hidden.

  After visiting four or five piles of mundane rocks, ignoring her vast mountains of mineral worth, she turned back to the group.

  “Okay, that should do it for now. On to the next room!”

  Jessica swore she heard the bank manager whimper, and secretly, she agreed.

  The next door was no better, if she was gauging what was behind it by how it made her feel. The door bore a symbol of a saw cutting through a log, and indeed, inside they found what she could only describe as a lumber yard.

  Logs.

  Logs and planks.

  For days.

  She knew even less about wood than she did about metal, which wasn’t a lot to begin with.

  But like the first room, there were piles and stacks, raw hewn trunks of giant trees and boards cut into uniform lengths. A carpenter could die here, happy.

  And that room wasn’t the last. It was only the second. Melia took a few things from there too before leading them on.

  The next room held a picture of a needle and thread. Melia led them inside, once again selecting a few things, and once again Jessica needed to steady her breath.

  Racks and racks and racks held countless bolts of fabrics and silks. Jessica’s eyes were immediately drawn to a small pile in the middle of the room holding a white cloth that seemed to glow under its own light.

  [Mooncloth].

  Jessica only knew about it because a member of Alastair’s order went to great lengths to procure some for ceremonial robes. It was a high ranking ceremony involving several high members of the church, at least two archbishops.

  [Mooncloth] was a secret guarded closely by the elves, as it needed to be purified in their moonwells as part of the crafting process. She’d been told that a single square of cloth only a yard on each side needed to soak in the well for an entire day before it became what it was. Each bolt commanded a king’s ransom and was given out only to those the elves deemed worthy.

  And yet Melia had enough of the cloth to open a bargain, discount shop.

  Jessica watched the gnome walk up to a pinkish-red fabric with deep purple embroidery that seemed almost magical. No. It probably was magical, considering whose vault this was.

  The next door had a symbol that looked like a star orbited by swirls, and upon entry, the bank manager nearly stumbled. The old man, in a bizarre looking twist, had to steady the younger one while he regained his bearings. Jessica took a step inside and as she did, she instinctively took in a sharp breath.

  This room was much smaller, around the size of an ordinary inn room. It was filled with a dozen floor to ceiling racks filled with hundreds of crystal containers, each holding a handful or two of dust.

  Essence.

  Those jars held the extremely potent, rendered down components of magical gear.

  This room was a storehouse, no, a true vault of enchanting materials.

  Jessica didn’t have the first clue how [Enchanting] worked, but she knew the few basics most adventurers learned.

  Such as the fact that a full sized breastplate built to fit a hulking barbarian, itself larger than she was tall, would only give up about a pinky finger’s worth of dust when disenchanted.

  Jessica did some quick math; each jar was nearly the size of her head and there were hundreds of jars, many of them packed full to bursting. Her conclusion was: ridiculous. Insane. She had heard that [Enchanting] was a rich man’s profession. Both in that it took a lot of money to start and cost a fortune to maintain. Jessica could truly understand that now. Each of those jars would be a dozen or so pieces of equipment, most likely more. There was a very real chance this small room by itself- no, a single rack in this room, was worth more than all the other three rooms put together.

  Jessica watched in stunned silence as the tiny gnome directed the old man to which jars she wanted, watched in horror as she opened them up, afraid on her behalf that some of the priceless dust inside might get scattered, retrieve a few pinches here and there and looked satisfied.

  Jessica was not sorry to see that door close behind them. Just thinking about what that room represented made her head spin.

  She was so out of sorts that she didn’t pay any attention to the next few rooms, other than the fact that they entered what seemed to be a freezer and the gnome, who shouldn’t have an appetite nearly the size that she did, retrieved a suspiciously enormous amount of meat.

  She perked up once again when the group entered a door marked with a bundle of herbs.

  “Okay!” Melia chirped enthusiastically, oblivious to everybody else’s inner turmoil. Jessica felt like she was trying to digest some profound meaning of life while the gnome was treating this trip like a jaunt to the market.

  Melia reached into her inventory and pulled out a piece of paper.

  “Mr. Jonathan, can you help Y’cennia gather these materials? In these quantities? Let me know if you have trouble fitting them in your inventory.”

  “Me?” Y’cennia blinked dumbly, not at all expecting to be addressed. In fact it looked like she was stepping out of a daze, a feeling Jessica could appreciate, as she was feeling much the same, only she was able to control it a little better. As a combat focused adventurer, freezing up like that was dangerous.

  “Yep!” Melia confirmed. “We’re going to power level you, remember? We need materials to do that.”

  Y’cennia nodded again, her face going deathly pale, having likely just realized their new friend hadn’t been pulling a prank or lying to them the whole time. She really did intend to give the [Alchemist] everything she needed to succeed, and Jessica found herself squashing a budding feeling of envy. No, she told herself, she would not be jealous. She was happy for her friend, her teammate, her partner. The fact that Y’cennia was the lowest level of them all was a silent worry that nobody wanted to bring up.

  Looking at this room, all it entailed, and the genuine honesty at which Melia directed the old vault keeper, Jessica suddenly understood that this was a worry no longer. If anything, Y’cennia was about to surpass all of them.

  Halfway through going through the list, Y’cennia ran out of inventory space. And what did the silly gnome do? Not something reasonable like start putting stuff into her own inventory, or asking Jessica to pitch in.

  She quickly walked out of the room and returned a moment later with a bag.

  A dedicated herb bag, no larger than a coin pouch, yet designed and enchanted to hold many, many times its own volume.

  Jessica had known about bags of holding of course, but she never dreamed of seeing one up close.

  Y’cennia seemed to be having the same thoughts, her hands shaking as she accepted the gift.

  And it was a gift, as the gnome had the nerve to say: “Here, use this. You can have it, it’s one of my older ones.”

  She said all that with a blasé wave of her hand. The implications also being that, A, she had more, and B, they were so paltry to her that she considered them inconsequential.

  As if a masterfully crafted magical pouch worth more than a small mansion wasn’t worth thinking about.

  When they finally fulfilled the need from that room, only Melia was still bouncing on her toes. Y’cennia looked both tired and determined; like the weight of the world rested on her shoulders and yet she somehow had the strength to carry it on.

  The bank manager had a strained smile but looked like he’d aged a decade, all the while the actual old man was patting him on the back, giving him gentle condolences with a wry smile on his lips.

  The teller, who Jessica couldn’t understand why Melia allowed him to follow, had a hand to his stomach like he was developing an ulcer, but at the same time his jaw was still slightly ajar and his eyes were watering a little from constantly being wide open. A state he’d held since first entering the vault, over an hour prior.

  The next room was just as fantastical as the last, being filled full of tools for various professions, but Jessica was starting to become numb to it all.

  At this point, she was expecting every room to be ridiculous, outlandish, and frankly absurd. She kept joking to herself that she would wake up any second, and part of her was half-jokingly thinking about calling Melia “my lady” too. Only half, though, because every time the old guy said it, with such sincerity and reverence, it seemed a little more true.

  Yes, even Jessica had to admit, after nine doors in this vault, that this could easily be considered a dragon’s hoard. She still imagined a hoard to be a giant pile of coins, but even in her wildest imagination, those hoards weren’t worth as much as everything they’d seen today.

  And then they opened the final door.

  She’d been shocked by every single door so far, but none of that could have prepared her for this.

  This…was an armory.

  Fit for a museum.

  The door, marked by a simple image of a breastplate, led to a grand hall. Countless mannequins and armor stands lined the walls, rows, and columns. Hundreds, if probably not thousands, of full sets of armor, as well as every type of weapon imaginable, were proudly on display.

  Not like one would find in an attic or a cellar.

  Beautiful, presentation grade stands posed and modeled each suit and robe, whether made of metal, leather, chain, or cloth.

  …all sized for somebody barely taller than her kneecaps.

  Of course, standing in the gnome’s vault they would find armor fit for a gnome, but something snapped inside Jessica and she laughed out loud.

  It was a loud, sharp laugh, closer to a bark, and it held a hint of her unraveling sanity, having spent too long seeing far too much too far out of her expectations.

  To make things worse, she had the strange (in this moment, where it was not welcome) affinity with her [Identify] to inspect a decent amount of the pieces on display.

  She looked immediately to her left, where one of the lowest level, simplest sets stood.

  [Bronze Chestplate]

  Quality: 5 stars

  Rarity: Uncommon

  Level: 10

  Strength: 2

  Stamina: 4

  Crafted by: Melia

  It was green. As in, not a common, mundane item, but a magical piece of equipment that enhanced the wearer’s stats. It wasn’t soulbound, and only required the wearer to be level 10. A literal child could wear this…if it actually fit them. Jessica could only wonder what her life would have been like if she had something like this. At that level, it may have legitimately doubled her stats. She couldn’t quite remember. And that was only the chest piece, there were also boots, legplates, and gloves.

  It boggled her mind, and she shook her head to clear it. No, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like. She wondered, half daring not to hope, if she might be able to figure it out in the future, with a set of her own.

  She watched, distracted, as Melia walked up to several of the pieces in the vault, a nostalgic smile on her face as she ran her hands over folds of fabric or the untarnished gleam of polished metal.

  Each one was [Epic] in quality, something very few high level adventurers could boast, never mind entire sets.

  And then she stood before a plinth Jessica hadn’t noticed before.

  In her defense, it was hard to notice some of these things when they were down so low in her vision, like waddling through a storehouse for large doll clothing.

  But the armor on that stand was never meant for any doll, no matter how large, how ceremonial.

  And unlike any other piece of gear Jessica had seen so far, this one was clearly well used. Well maintained, of course, as it was almost begging to be worn, but it had the obvious signs and scars of a long and storied career in heavy battle.

  Battle Jessica could easily imagine, as she’d seen this exact style before, or at least something very close.

  On the shoulders of giants, metaphorically if not quite physically.

  [Raiments of the Stormforged Commander]

  The same set of armor she’d seen depicted in murals and sagas, worn by human generals and elites as they clashed against world-ending threats and wars a century ago.

  It was both showy and dignified: the armor had presence.

  The plates looked like steel, though Jessica doubted very much that was what they were really made of. Many forged metals had the same finished look and feel once smelted, and the set before her was a little too shiny and bright.

  “Right where I left it!” Melia exclaimed, running a hand over the silver-grey chestplate. Jessica thought she almost heard a hint of surprise in the gnome’s tone, but she couldn’t be sure. In a flash, Melia had her [Changing Room] set up and her armor vanished from the stand, and several moments later the tall curtained room vanished, leaving a gnome transformed.

  Melia stood a little taller, though she still didn’t come to Jessica’s waist, and her whole persona seemed radically changed. Gone was the fun loving, bubbly, strange and weird creature that spouted ridiculous nonsense and performed impossible feats.

  Jessica did not doubt for a second the woman in front of her could still do all of that.

  It was just that now, she carried the weight and air of a general leading their troops to war.

  The suit of armor was fully encompassing, from head to toe, with heavy looking boots that crunched against the vault’s stone floor, legplates, chestplate, gauntlets, and pauldrons. A deep blue, almost purple cape draped over her left shoulder, pinned in place on her collar and shoulder by a gold chain capped by two small lion’s heads, roaring in defiance. In Melia’s hand was a winged helmet, and though she did not put it on, Jessica could already imagine her standing atop a mountain of corpses with the sunset glinting behind her, creating a silhouette of a radiant Valkyrie descending from the heavens.

  “I forgot how uncomfortable it was,” Melia sighed, dispelling the illusion as she shuffled from foot to foot awkwardly. After another moment, she returned to her old outfit, but her armor didn’t return to the stand, having been stashed into her storage.

  “Well, that’s everything,” Melia sighed, “Shall we go?”

  Jessica startled to attention as the grand, dignified aura vanished.

  “My lady, do you require a visit to your hoard?”

  Melia tilted her head curiously at the old man’s words before smiling mischievously.

  “I suppose a quick trip wouldn’t hurt,” she shrugged.

  Wasn’t this whole vault supposed to be her “hoard”? And what about the open room at the end of the hall?

  Jessica supposed she was about to get at least one of those answers, as they exited the armory and walked away from the exit to the vault.

  The walk was short, only a dozen or so feet, but something about it seemed to stretch on, feeling like an eternity to Jessica. Especially since the closer they got, the white light emanating from the very vault itself took on a rich, golden hue. As they passed the threshold, the entire group froze in place, stricken dumb and mute, their minds unable to comprehend.

  The room itself was sunk deep into the floor, with a generous walkway running from the entry along the side of all four walls. The hole, or pool, or depression, or whatever anybody wanted to call it, was larger than the entirety of the bank itself.

  And it was full.

  Overflowing.

  Of gold coins.

  Jessica herself felt…nothing, strangely, at first, because it was too surreal. She didn’t seem capable of understanding that she was staring at a literal mountain of gold coins. It wasn’t until she heard a faint thunk on the wall next to her that she snapped to attention. The young teller was slumped against it, crumpled into himself as if everything he knew about the world was a lie.

  Y’cennia, perhaps without realizing, muttered what everyone was thinking.

  “How much?” she simply said.

  “2,147,483,647,” Melia answered in a strangely smirking tone, as if that number had special significance, though Jessica had no idea why. That much gold was unreal. Impossible. And yet, her eyes did not lie.

  …did they?

  “It’s very pretty, isn’t it?” Melia sighed, and that, Jessica instantly thought, was a very dragon thing to say.