Vivi didn’t think Winston harbored any doubts toward the truth of her identity, but if he did, unlocking her personal vault dispelled them.

She set a hand against the slab of black metal inlaid into her bedroom wall, and complex, interlocking runes activated all across the surface. Power hummed in the air as the symbols glowed dark purple, reached a crescendo, and dimmed.

With a hiss, the personal vault of Vivisari Vexaria swung open.

She drank in the sight. There was a lot she’d been looking forward to after arriving, miraculously, in Seven Cataclysms, and appraising the personal hoard she’d accrued over so many thousands of hours sat near the top of the list.

What met her was a long hallway interspersed with black stone pillars holding a vaulted roof. Between the pillars were armor stands, weapon racks, shelves, pedestals, glass cases—the list went on. Seeing the arrangement, she breathed out a sigh of relief. Her stash lived. It hadn’t vanished into the ether, been ransacked, or any other unfortunate outcome.

She had no clue whether every item had carried over, and indeed she doubted that was the case, but clearly a significant amount had. Inside her vault awaited a treasury that all the kings of the world couldn’t match. The value dwarfed that of her bank account many times over. Her real wealth was in items.

Stepping into the extra-spatial storage, cool air kissed her skin, the change in temperature stark. Pausing as she didn’t hear Winston enter, she looked over her shoulder. The butler stayed loyally at the entryway.

“You can join me if you want.”

“Are you certain, Mistress?”

She nodded, and he didn’t need to be convinced. He stepped in, polished black shoes clicking against tile. His eyes surveyed the space with naked fascination—his stoic version of such, anyway.

“I forget what I even have in here,” Vivi said. “Cataloging it is going to be a headache.”

“Shall I attend to that on your behalf?”

She hadn’t meant to imply that request, and she opened her mouth to turn him down, then hesitated. He was her butler, and seemed to find honor in the role. Wasn’t this exactly what she should ask of him?

“If you wouldn’t mind, that would be useful, yes.”

In the game, she’d been able to sort through and access her personal stash using a pop-up screen. That wasn’t the case here. She could only walk around and grab items. Which made this tedious. There was a lot to sort through.

Winston set off to compile a list. Vivi let her gaze run across the stretching hallway filled with artifacts, and her lips tugged into a frown.

What did she need from here? Anything?

She hadn’t rushed to her vault with a specific goal in mind. Simply because she’d woken with only her challenge-run set: the Vestments of the Voidwalker, her staff, accessories, and a set of routine consumables. That said, even if there was nothing essential she needed, there were a number of items that did come to mind.

The more she appraised the vault, the more certain she became it hadn’t carried over one-to-one. Few mechanics or aspects of Seven Cataclysms had. While an enormous gallery, compared to the pages and pages of items that should be stored away, clearly large portions had been culled. Trimmed down to the best, she hoped.

Most of it had been junk accrued over years, so it didn’t bother her. She’d been overdue for a spring cleaning. Even if some of the good stuff was missing, she wouldn’t be too frustrated. She’d braced herself for the whole vault being wiped clean or not existing at all. That she had access to even what she could lay eyes on represented a major victory. There were items here that would give most Titled a heart attack to [Inspect]—if they even could.

With Winston cataloging the right side of the hallway, Vivi chose the left.

Inventory space was limited, so she could hardly scoop up the entire vault. She needed to be judicious with her selection.

Was there a way to get around that? An anchored spatial storage? A pocket world she could carry around, with all of her belongings inside? She could craft such an artifact. Had one, somewhere, if it hadn’t vanished.

But no. Vivisari’s magical knowledge informed her that the interference between items would be problematic. This vault was special; it muted the radiation so many powerful artifacts put out and softened what should have been cataclysmic levels of mana-mingling. If she stacked these items into a pile in the real world, the resulting phenomena would be—interesting, to say the least.

She could maybe create a pocket world with a similar dampening effect, but that would be a serious undertaking. She filed it away as a possibility. For now, she needed to curate.

The first armor stand on her left held a set of gray robes with gold cuffs. Around the neck hung a ruby necklace, and a stand to the side presented two rings, both with fat sapphires. Completing the ensemble was a staff of white polished metal.

This item set, she recognized quickly. The Robes of the Astral Cascade and the Moonbeam Conduit. Drops from the Shattered Oracle. While not best-in-slot, generally speaking, each of these armor stands and accessories represented a specialization that she could conceivably want on hand. Sustained DPS. AoE and farming. Burst damage. High defense. Mobility and exploration. Even elemental-specific sets and more niche uses. She’d had plenty of time to accrue anything she might need over the years.

The Robes of the Astral Cascade and the accompanying gear were her general sustained-damage set, hence their closeness to the entrance. She briefly considered putting them on, but when she reached out and felt the rough wool, she wrinkled her nose and decided against it. Her current set was much comfier.

The Vestments of the Voidwalker were probably the better choice from a practical standpoint anyway. They focused on reducing cooldowns and cast times over boosting firepower, since soloing the Ashen Hierophant had meant she’d needed to respond to any attack in an instant. Squishy mage she was, dodging, evasion, and versatility had been by far the most important build-archetype.

Still, she saw no reason not to keep one or two sets of gear on hand. She deposited the Robes of the Astral Cascade, the accompanying jewelry, and Moonbeam Conduit, then walked down the line of other robes and picked two more sets out. Should, for some reason, she come up against an actual threat, she wanted to have appropriate gear ready.

Moving past the armor and weapons that stretched halfway down the hallway, the items grew more unique. The first that caught her eye was a pedestal securing a red and orange feather inside a crystalline container. The feather floated in the air, shedding brilliant embers in a constant waterfall, sparking and dying as they hit a force field.

Vivi recognized it. She lifted the crystal top and grabbed the huge feather at the hollow base, turning it side to side in fascination. When the feather was in motion, it seemed as if it were on fire.

“[Summon],” she ordered.

The feather combusted. A dense column of red and orange erupted in front of her, washing her face with the dry heat of a desert. From the heart of the flames, a great bird of burning plumage emerged with a cry. Wingspan unfurling and column fading, a phoenix of crimson and gold lowered bright eyes toward her. 

“Nova,” Vivi said, pleased. “You’re…a lot bigger than I remember.”

It wasn’t a real phoenix. Those were sapient, immortal creatures, and even standing in the presence of one would probably kill anything below Titled. No, Nova was an artificial summons.

“A super cute one, though,” Vivi muttered, reaching out to scratch his chin. He happily accepted.

She was vaguely aware of Winston staring at her from across the vault. Had he known about Nova? She got the impression he hadn’t.

After getting her fill of petting the bird, she lifted the feather and said, “[Dismiss].”

In another explosion of fire and light, the magical construct disassembled and flew back into the phoenix feather.

“Mistress?” Winston asked, walking up with obvious hesitation.

“Just a construct,” Vivi said. “Even I wouldn’t keep a phoenix hostage.”

A long pause.

“Because it’s probably impossible,” she sighed.

Could she, if she tried hard enough?

Well, no, again. They were sapient. She wouldn’t from a moral standpoint. Killing phoenixes for alchemy parts was fine; they got better afterward, as phoenixes tended to. And were more monster than human, despite their intelligence.

“…of course, Mistress Vivisari.” He didn’t sound assured, but bowed and returned to his duties.

Vivi examined the feather. How powerful was Nova? In the game, summons were just for aesthetics, meant to be used as pets, not for combat. But she’d felt the magic radiating off him. He’d had a level when she [Inspected] him. 1300.

He might make for a useful guardian for Saffra. Vivi would have to run some experiments and make sure he was combat-ready and easy to control, though. Saffra having a Titled-rank defender to call on would bring her peace of mind, so she hoped it worked out.

She tucked the feather into her inventory for later exploration.

Making her way down the line, she evaluated each item and decided whether it was worth filling her limited—if spacious—inventory. Most didn’t make the cut. The truth was, magic solved most of her problems. Items that she could give away or lend to another interested her much more than anything she could use herself.

There were some artifacts whose effects even she couldn’t replicate, though. Stopping at a glass container, she paused, then brightened.

Now that would be useful. She’d half expected it to not exist in this new reality. It broke fundamental laws even she couldn’t circumvent.

Opening the case and removing a silver bell, she inspected the ornate designs, then faced Winston, who was studiously sorting a shelf of potions.

She rang it.

Winston shot to his feet like someone had stepped on his grave. At the same instant, a black rend sliced the air in a long, vertical slit, and expanded into a rectangular door large enough for him to fit through. An identical gateway opened next to Vivi.

Winston spared a look for her from across the hallway, raised an eyebrow, then stepped through the portal. He appeared next to her.

“You called, Mistress Vivisari?”

“Just checking that it still works. Sorry.”

He bowed—somehow this man could make bowing look sarcastic—and stepped back through the gateway, returning to the other side of the vault.

Vivi looked at the item in her hand. The Servant’s Bell violated a law even she couldn’t break: it opened gateways between her and Winston no matter the distance, no [Warp Anchor] required.

Unfortunately, only he could use them. She couldn’t send him off to a remote part of the continent and teleport herself to him, using him as a fast-travel method. Nor could she hand the bell to Saffra. The item facilitated a butler’s ultimate duty to always be available to his mistress, but nothing more.

Still, it was worth keeping. She tucked it into her inventory.

The raid of her vault continued. Over the next half-hour, she stuffed her spatial storage full of all sorts of useful items, several of which deserved further experimentation.

Naturally, she stockpiled a huge quantity of potions, scrolls, and other consumables, nearly clearing out the shelves. Those were by far some of the most useful, seeing how she could give Saffra some for her protection, and anyone else she ran into.

…Though, in the case of scrolls, maybe it wouldn’t be the best idea to let a thirteen-year-old girl carry a nuclear weapon in her back pocket. Saffra had a decent head on her shoulders, but she was also emotionally volatile and undoubtedly rash. The only tier-15 and higher spells she would give away would be defensive ones. Ones that couldn’t erase a small town. Vivi had little experience parenting—not that she was a parent to Saffra—but taking that minimal level of precaution seemed wise.

As for creating more of those potions and scrolls…she would have to talk to Rafael. The crafting situation, as she’d discover minutes after waking in the Ashen Hierophant’s lair, wasn’t one-to-one to the game. Crafting more max-level potions like the ones she had woken with should be possible, but there seemed to be some asterisks on that whole process.

Exploring the crafting system was on her to-do list. As many things were.

When she’d made a lap around the vault and possessed a comfortably full inventory, she met with Winston.

“I need to go find Rafael,” she said. “We should talk more after, though. I want to see what you’ve done with the Academy, and meet your family.” And say sorry to Constance again. “I’ll tell you what I find out, and what our plans are, once I’m done with him.”

“You honor me, Mistress.”

The words and smile he gave were genuine enough that she was taken aback. She didn’t deserve a follower like this. Maybe Vivisari had saved the world, but she, Vivienne, was just some shut-in.

She would have to do her best to live up to his expectations, she guessed.

“Don’t take offense,” Vivi said, “but I’m keeping a low profile.” His eye twitched, and she pretended not to notice. “Your students saw me. They’ll stay quiet?”

“Discretion is a fundamental virtue of any servant.” He frowned slightly, considering the question more seriously. “I expect news of your presence would hold indefinitely; I have faith in them. But I would not say there is zero chance, Mistress, loath as I am to allow even a flicker of doubt into my mind.”

“That’s more than enough. It’s not that serious. Just tell them to keep quiet, please.”

“They should have an implicit understanding of such, but I will remind them nonetheless.”

She nodded. “I’ll be back later. Thank you for the help, Winston. You’ve been invaluable, as always.”

He swelled with pride, and Vivi wondered why her words meant so much to him.

She paused as she realized what her next step entailed.

“Ah. Where’s the Guild Headquarters, again?”