Ilbert finished calibrating the huge device in front of him and straightened up, feeling Liam's gaze.
"The message has been sent, your Excellency. I believe several groups should receive it and come to join us," he said.
Liam nodded, recalling what the great elder Valyr had said.
Each Valyr above rank 1 was equipped with an official badge that represented their status. Normally, it was just a simple piece of metal, but it had a hidden function: it could receive an emergency message.
In the original plans of the Valyrs, they were supposed to use it in case of disaster to instruct everyone to hide, but the transmitter took several minutes to turn on, and they didn't have enough time to activate it.
There were only two of these transmitters: one in the royal palace and one here, in the treasure vault.
Liam quickly understood how the device worked and lost all interest.
It was just a simple magical transmitter, and even though it represented the pinnacle of magical technology in this world, it was very outdated compared to the Alliance's technologies, and its size made it almost unusable in real conditions.
Liam didn't stay long and returned to the main hall, where the nagas had already dismantled about ten shelves.
At the rate things were going, it would probably take a few days to move everything.
The Valyr treasure vault consisted of a main hall and five other rooms, including an armory, an artificial garden, an artifact warehouse, the communication hall, and a library.
The armory contained nearly two thousand magical weapons and armors. Most were robes made for mages, increasing their concentration and the power of their spells, or magical staves adorned with runes. Most were of rank 2 or rank 3, but there were still about a dozen robes and scepters of rank 4.
In addition, there were about a hundred heavy armors made for the Drakos and some weapons such as two-handed swords, spears, or shields, probably looted from the battlefield.
Although they were just equipment for lesser beings, and even if the armors were useless, the weapons would be a good addition to the nagas' arsenal.
The artificial garden was a large square piece of land of 10,000 m² where many rank 2 and 3 plants grew, with even two rank 4 herbs.
The soil was a special fertilizer created by the Valyrs by mixing a bunch of things and was a treasure by itself: it contained all the nutrients needed to grow hundreds of rank 3 plants.
Afraid that the nagas would damage the plants, Liam directly spent 50 000 faith points and sent everything to his divine realm, further increasing the burden of his demi-plane.
The artifact warehouse contained various magical tools.
For example, there were defensive items (a kind of weakened version of Ruvia's necklace), items made to increase the concentration of mages when casting spells, others to facilitate the control of their mana,... All of this as rings, bracelets, or necklaces.
There were also many portable magical arrays, such as illusion arrays, attack arrays, defense arrays, spiritual concentration arrays,...
Finally, there were several auxiliary magical tools, such as beakers, test tubes, or magic-reinforced pipes, magic microscopes, glasses allowing to see the flow of spiritual energy,...
In short, there were all kinds of items, but each had its own use and could prove more than useful depending on the situation.
There was only one item in the communication room. It was the enormous transmitter Ilbert used to gather the surviving Valyrs.
The library contained for its part tens of thousands of books on magical experiments and almost all rank 1 to 4 spells discovered by the Valyrs.
There were also a lot of books explaining magical formations, rune forging, potion concoction,... but also on more general knowledge, such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, study of minerals and materials,...
Although these were low end information that didn't exceed rank 4, they covered such vast and different fields that Liam was unaware of most of the knowledge contained in the library.
After all, nobody could master everything, and although the gods had great learning capabilities, they didn't break this rule.
Moreover, each book was made of magical paper and could be preserved for hundreds of years without any damage.
For a newborn world like Liam's divine realm, this knowledge was priceless and very important as it would save Liam's believers thousands of years of research on all these subjects.
The pearls containing such knowledge would surely exceed legendary tier and would be out of reach, the library itself was more valuable to Liam than anything found in the treasure vault.
Finally, everything that didn't fit into these categories was placed on the shelves of the main hall.
It included skins of great beasts and spiritual beasts, rare magical ores, spiritual beast eggs, several blocks of mythril, magic-reinforced alloy bars, and nearly 3000 spiritual stones accumulated by the Valyrs over thousands of years.
Although the will of the plane limited the extraction of spiritual stones, it couldn't prevent natives from collecting a few from time to time.
After all, even if there were no source stones in the plane, it would eventually generate new veins over time, despite the process being very long.
With time, they ended up accumulating a huge quantity, and Liam wasn't going to hold back.
Only children make choices. As an adult, he intended to completely empty the treasure vault and leave nothing behind.
...
A young Valyr ran at full speed through the ruined streets of the city.
He was panting, and his face was red as he was drenched in sweat.
Suddenly, a dark figure jumped from one of the buildings and landed right in front of him.
Issen widened his eyes and froze, but he didn't have time to turn back before the figure grabbed him and pinned him to the ground, sitting on him.
"Haha, Issen, you lost again!"
The young man smiled as he looked at the female Valyr sitting astride his stomach.
"Yeah, yeah, you won, you're really strong," he said.
This young Valyr was named Lea Calmea and was already an advanced-tier mage apprentice, even though she was only thirteen years old.
She arrived a day before him, and at that time, they were the only two Valyr children.
Although other groups joined them short after, they both found it difficult to mingle with the other children and instead became very close to each other.
They both laughed and went back.
They soon arrived in front of a large building guarded by two powerful half-human, half-snake beings holding a spear and a shield.
The two young ones put on awkward smiles and greeted the two red-moon nagas, who responded with a simple nod.
After they arrive here and were welcomed by Ilbert, they first cast doubtful glances at them, but they quickly turned into looks of admiration with a slight hint of fear.
After all, actions spoke for themselves.
Seeing them tear war beasts in two like paper was more than enough to impress the young children.
...
Ilbert and Liam stood in front of the enormous magical transmitter, silent.
Finally, Ilbert displayed a determined expression and looked at Liam.
"I... I don't think anyone else will come," he said.
Liam looked at the old Valyr elder with sadness in his eyes, and he could only sigh.
It was their last day in the plane and it had been almost four days since the last group of survivors had come; he was almost sure no one else would come.
Except Vinaya city and the capital, the other Valyr cities had no magus and had simply been wiped off the map.
Thus, the Valyrs still alive could only come from Vinaya City.
After Ilbert informed Liam of how the transmitter worked, he was almost certain that there were still survivors nearby, but he didn't have the time or the resources to search the area thoroughly.
As Liam left the room, he placed a comforting hand on the old Valyr's shoulder.
"You've done everything you could. Now it's time to move forward and focus on the present."
...
A few hours later all the rescued Valyrs stood in the center of the treasure vault and faced the space channel with apprehension.
As the crowd grew noisy and exchanged uncertain glances, Ilbert took the lead and flew up, overlooking the survivors.
"Silence!" he shouted as he fully released his aura of intermediate being.
Quickly, the crowd fell silent, watching their former great elder attentively.
"I think most of you already know me, but let me introduce myself for the few newcomers who never saw me. My name is Ilbert Luminara, and I used to be the great elder of the Valyr kingdom..."
Ilbert then told them why the will of the plane had turned against them and had pushed the two other major races of the plane to team up against the Valyr race.
He explained everything; including how he managed to escape from the capital, taking Ruvia, his injury, and how he had met Liam and the nagas.
"His Excellency, the divine envoy, healed me and allowed me to regain my strength, but he did even more and is ready to give us a new home; a place that we will be free to call home again."
Still in flight, Ilbert bowed, tears in his eyes.
"I know words can’t change the past, but please accept my most sincere apologies. You trusted us, the royal family, but we failed to live up to that trust. We were unable to see greed consume the upper echelon of our race, nor were we able to defend you when the threat came.”
"Please, trust us one last time! The Lord of the Azure Abyss is merciful and grants us a chance to save our race, so I beg you, make the right choice."
Liam frowned and appeared behind Ilbert, helping him up.
"The great elder is right. In his kindness, our lord has granted his mercy to your race and is willing to welcome you as long as you coexist with the species that already live in the other world."
At that moment, an old Valyr woman who was a pinnacle mage interrupted him.
"And what happens if we refuse?"
She was the only mage among the survivors and had brought back a group of more than seventy people by herself. It could be said that she was the most respected among the Valyrs survivors.
Eventhough Liam remained impassive.
"We won't force anyone to come, but if you decide to join our world, you must follow our rules. There will be no exceptions."
Some Valyrs frowned, and they began whispering again. It took more than five minutes before the female mage made up his mind.
"Alright, I will follow the great elder's advice and come with you!" The old mage said
She seemed to have paved the way, and one by one, the other Valyrs agreed to come to Liam's divine realm.
There were 148 Valyrs, including one mage, 37 acolytes, and 58 apprentice mages. The others were all mortals who did not have the gift for magic or were still too young.
It could be said that the overall strength of his divine realm had directly tripled.
The addition of a long-range class had an exceptional effect. As long as the nagas managed to protect them, they could unleash a torrent of magic attacks and completely overwhelm any army.
As Liam inwardly smiled, watching the Valyrs cross the portal, Ilbert's relief quickly turned into furious rage as he looked at the few survivors of his race.
"Your Excellency, I have a request to make of you."
