Awakening the Divine Spark-Chapter 109: Finding the vault.

At the first glance it was impossible to get in the God’s vault solely because Lunax had no palace, lair or even a shack. No one knew where he actually stayed, and no one cared. The elemental lord was their deity and people didn’t dare to question anything about him.

Lee knew that the success of any operation lie in proper preparation and investigation, thus the first thing he did was to gather information who actually had received the God’s gifts.

Turns out either most recipients kept their achievement a secret or there were not that many to begin with. Out of the fifteen publicly known figures, all had items that stood out, thus for them it was impossible to maintain secrecy.

Two of them were Arax and Slivax whom Lee had already met, and it was out of the question to ask them for help. On the other hand, the rest were strangers, and he started by finding and interviewing them all.

Unsurprisingly, several of these local celebrities were popular and had quite a few fans who catered to their every whim. And while having servants was convenient for them, they made Lee’s job harder. He couldn’t come up to these people unobstructed, without anyone asking what he was up to first. Thus, in the beginning he was forced to gather the information from underlings.

As expected, at their level the procedure of acquiring the God’s gifts was something one would describe in ancient myths and legends. It involved stories about mystical places the lucky individuals were brought to, and unbelievable magic that was used to open the sacred vault.

Obviously Lee ignored everything that was related to the contents of the vaults, since the exaggeration at that point became ridiculous, but he managed to filter out few useful things nevertheless.

First of all, the vault was somewhere underground. He already guessed it, but everyone basically confirmed this suspicion.

Another curious thing about the procedure was that Lunax actually never brought the lucky ones to his vault personally. It was either to maintain his mysteriousness, or he was simply too lazy, or maybe busy – the caretakers handled these matters. And one of them, Coulax, the head caretaker, was always present.

The worrying part was that in every story there was some kind of magic involved when the vault was opened. At first Lee only snickered hearing about it, but the more people insisted it was true, the more he became certain the process of getting into the vault included caretakers using their elemental powers.

These were bad news, but he was certain the museums and some villas he and Lisa got in back in the day had much more advanced security systems.

With the preliminary information gathering mostly done, Lee began to wander through the underground tunnels, which, according to most, stretched everywhere under the surface of the entire world. If that was the case, he was certain to stumble upon areas that had limited access.

It took him several days, but after meticulous search and mapping the whole tunnel system on a piece of wood, Lee pinpointed the most likely area where the vault might’ve been hidden. He was stopped by armed guards on multiple occasions when trying to enter that particular zone, and the only explanation they gave was the vague claim that the place belonged to the caretakers.

On the surface there was only one such place – the famous office, which basically fulfilled the functions of the local government and law enforcement at the same time. It wasn’t hard to deduct that the vault was somewhere underneath it, and it only made sense.

The next part was risky, but without it Lee had no chance to progress on his quest.

He hung outside the office for half a day until found a shorter looking caretaker who apparently finished his shift. He followed the guy to his residence, a surprisingly small one story house several blocks away, and the next morning vaulted in through the window after the caretaker left.

Turns out the caretakers led as simple lives as the rest of Lunax’s devotees. The two rooms were dark and mostly empty. Only few pieces of crude furniture set the caretaker apart from the regular folk, but Lee wasn’t after valuables. He was interested in the large box that functioned as a wardrobe.

Mostly guided by touch, Lee found a hooded cloak and immediately wore it. It was unlikely it was of any other color than dark-purple, and after hiding under the hood, Lee left the house through the front door.

Since his arrival to Ashland, Lee had never experienced such attention and respect from passersby. People were greeting him, bowing to him, but he replied with a slight nod at best, while keeping his head low. The caretakers had the reputation of being haughty and unapproachable, and he gladly acted that way.

It was good the office was this close, because before anything, Lee needed to find the local storage. He might’ve been successful in borrowing the cloak, but if the caretaker found out his spare one was missing, Lee was certain he would be discovered within a day.

Apparently the bureaucrats in all worlds were the same, and so were their offices. This one was similarly brightly lit, except with embedded luminous stones in the walls instead of lamps, and the workers rushed around the hallways, not paying attention to anyone else.

Lee was surprised how easy it was to infiltrate it, but while that part went smooth, he stumbled upon a problem. He did find a storage, but instead of it being locked, there was a bored caretaker sitting next to it, apparently guarding.

"Shoes?" He asked, throwing a glance at Lee’s attire, and immediately pointing out the worst looking item.

"Mhm." Lee answered with a nod. His sandals were in a terrible condition, and he was so used to them he forgot to borrow ones from the caretaker’s place.

But this time it worked out.

"You’ll find something decent in the back, to the left." The caretaker said. From the looks of it, in addition to his guard duties, he also had to work as the inventory manager.

Lee’s heart was pounding with excitement the moment he stepped back on the street, armed with new sandals and with a spare cloak hidden underneath his current one. Clearly he got away this easy only because the crime rate in Ashland was so low, and it was unlikely someone would dare to pull off what he did just now.

But this was only the beginning.

After putting back the borrowed cloak, Lee found the entrance to the vault the same day. It was as he expected, in the restricted area, but this time he got to explore it without anyone stopping him or asking questions.

Turns out the vault was located directly under the office. There were even stairs leading to it. The entrance, though, was from a brightly lit cave room which was guarded by a lone caretaker.

Contrary to the storytellers, there were no beautiful statues, or drawings on the walls. There were no burning torches or other nonsense. The place was as simple as could be, and Lee already expected that. It would be moronic to advertise the spot where you keep your valuables, and Lunax was many things, but certainly not an idiot.

When Lee entered the place, the guy guarding it visibly lit up, thinking Lee was going to take the next shift. And for the first time in this life Lee regretted not having a watch. He had no clue what time it was and when the shifts were changed, but decided to make the use of the opportunity anyway.

After nodding to the caretaker, for a short while Lee was left in the cave hall alone. He could observe the large, oval stone that appeared to be the entrance to the vault. It had three plate-shaped depressions arranged in a triangle formation and, in the middle, a palm sized socket.

’Looks like I’ll need the key after all.’ Lee said to himself, and left the door, and few moments later a caretaker arrived to relieve him of his short lived guard duties.