When Leilin saw the stone platform and the black book in the center self-destruct, not a trace of regret crossed his face.
For him, the greatest reward of this trip was already in hand. Even if he found nothing else from here on, he had no regrets.
Crack! Crack!
Two blue cocoons also shattered in front of Leilin, revealing the two items that had been inside. He caught them both steadily.
The black pouch made from the skin of a Void White-Eyed Snake felt soft to the touch, with a warm sensation continuously radiating from it. The silver patterns on its surface seemed to come alive, constantly writhing across the pouch's exterior in shimmering ripples of light.
"As expected of the Void White-Eyed Snake — the legendary favored child of space. Even the adults naturally develop spatial runes on their surface..."
Leilin murmured in admiration, his fingers tracing across the pouch again and again.
"What a pity! The Void White-Eyed Snake isn't a bloodline creature. Otherwise, even though this leather has been solidified by an ancient wizard and lost its vitality, I might still have been able to extract a bloodline from it..."
Leilin sighed, then turned his gaze to the honeycomb-like object beside it.
Dark green pearls were embedded across its surface, each one looking like an eerie, staring eye. After staring at it for a while, Leilin actually began to feel a wave of dizziness.
"This thing is really unsettling. I'll need to look up references later and analyze its composition..."
Leilin set the thought aside, then extended a wisp of spiritual power onto the pouch made from the Void White-Eyed Snake's skin.
Whoosh!
The drawstring at the pouch's neck instantly loosened, revealing a pitch-black opening. In that moment, Leilin felt his spiritual power connect to a peculiar space.
The space wasn't large — only about the size of two or three rooms. Its four walls glowed with a hazy white light, and the spatial runes he had seen on the pouch's surface earlier could be seen drifting across the luminescence. Through his spiritual power, Leilin sensed that he could apparently stuff any inanimate object inside.
He immediately turned to the honeycomb object.
Whoosh! The honeycomb vanished from his hand in an instant, and within the space, a honeycomb-shaped object studded with countless pearls now floated serenely in the void.
"What a bizarre sensation. And the pouch hasn't gained any weight either..." Leilin hefted it experimentally.
Just as he was about to close the pouch, a stream of spiritual information flowed out from deep within it.
"Successor! Congratulations on obtaining my final creation — the Endless Pouch of Greed! I had hoped, in the last stretch of my life, to forge a magical artifact worthy of being remembered through the ages! Alas, in the end it remained stuck at the level of a high-grade Magical Item! May you treat it well, and help it ascend further... left by Meipisi!"
"Meipisi — I've never heard that name, but he must have been an alchemist from the ancient era!"
Leilin studied his newly acquired first high-grade Magical Item with a measure of surprise.
On the South Coast, low-grade Magical Items were what apprentices and struggling First-rank Wizards used. Half-elementalized and peak wizards made use of mid-grade Magical Items. Only the truly exceptional geniuses, or Second-rank Wizards, could hope to own a high-grade Magical Item!
As for magical artifacts above that tier, the major powers had always kept them hidden away. Even Leilin had never heard any concrete details about them.
And now, Leilin possessed a high-grade Magical Item himself. Though it wasn't an offensive type, the help it would provide him far outweighed what even a high-grade offensive Magical Item could offer!
Leilin swept his gaze across the surrounding items.
Around the black stone platform stood several rows of small wooden shelves. While the items on them were fewer and couldn't compare to the three treasures on the platform, they were still things that would make half-elementalized or even peak First-rank Wizards tear each other apart if word got out!
"Since I'm already here, all of these are mine!"
Leilin grinned. Dense wisps of black mist coalesced into tiny snakes that lunged toward the shelves on every side...
Ten-odd minutes later, Leilin walked out of the vault with a satisfied smile on his face.
His haul this time had been enormously rich. Even though some of the stashed items had self-destructed due to the defensive arrays, under his fast hands he had still managed to claim nearly eighty percent of the entire stockpile!
The sheer variety of rare materials inside dazzled him. Some were so exotic that even his database — updated steadily over the years — had no record of them. If he had to put a rough estimate on it, the total value was at least tens of millions of Magic Stones!
"These resources are more than enough to carry me all the way to Second-rank Wizard and sustain me for a long time afterward..."
Leilin patted the black pouch tucked inside his robe, and the smile on his face deepened further.
His greatest prize this time was, without question, the Endless Pouch of Greed. A storage-type high-grade Magical Item — even for a Second-rank Wizard, it was the kind of thing one could only stumble upon by sheer luck.