Lotus had the others wait outside the temple while she continued to look around. As she hadn't been affected by the sleep inducement, and they had watcher her kill an old man, they didn't argue with her about going alone, though Dawn did seem as though she wanted to. To make sure they didn't wander off or freeze, Lotus brought out some of the rotten furniture wood out for them to make a fire with, before heading once again back inside.
As she walked past the throne on her way to the library, she once again strained her mind about some way to move the golden chair, though nothing useful came to mind. Considering its size, it would have been hard to even find a forge big enough to melt it, so there wasn't even a way to make it a more convenient shape. Inside the old man's room, which was previously so filled with piled books that it there was very little walking space, she found that the books had been reduced to dust, as if the old man's life had been the only thing holding the books together. She found that regretful; had she known that would happen she would have looked to see if there was anything worth making copies of first. Walking in the ankle deep dust was a disgusting experience, and every breath made her want to choke. None the less she walked over to the stone bed and, more importantly, the draw that was built into it. As she slid it out, which took some effort with the slide being filled with dust, she found soft leather wrapping, protecting a few items.
The first time covered the rest, as if to protect them, and was a metal breastplate made from a deep purple metal and embossed with leaf pattern trimmings. It was sized about right for either herself or Dawn, depending on how much padding was worn underneath it, but it was nowhere near large enough for Dima or Oak. That was, if anyone wanted to use it. Lotus wasn't familiar with metals, and didn't even know if there were purple metals in the real world, let alone if they were strong enough to make good armour out of. That said, just going by its appearance and general feeling, she assumed there was something magical about it.
The next thing that caught her eye was a silver flute, about as long as a tall man's forearm. Although she hadn't learnt any instruments, she found it to be a beautiful item, though she didn't know how it would compare to other flutes. She told herself that when she next logged out, she would download a virtual reality tutorial to teach her how to play. For the moment she tucked it carefully in a loop on her belt, wanting to keep it close. After that, there was a pair of leather gloves, with runic patterns tooled around the centre of their backs, forming a circle around an untooled space. As she touched one, it adjusted its size to fit her, an indication that it might have been magical, and she put it on. When trying to figure out what it did, and picking up her scythe to see if it affected her strength, she found that it made her scythe disappear, creating the tooled image of her scythe on the glove. After some more messing about, she found he could summon the weapon back to her by clicking her fingers. The glove seemed to store a single item, or a small bag of item that apparently needed to be smaller than a draw, and it stored the first time she touched after emptying it, and to return her weapon she need to pass it to her left and then juggle it back. As she put the other glove on, she thought that, not knowing what the breastplate did, she was sure that the gloves were the best thing she would find in the temple, and was glad that she didn't have to carry her heavy scythe around when she didn't need it.
The last thing in the wrap was what she estimated to be two hundred small golden coins. It was the first currency she had found in the game, as the players she'd found all bartered, and as she'd read on the forums, the coins gave off a slight magical aura, that NPCs used to tell if they were real coins. There were apparently a few merchant based classes that could drain the magic from coins in order to power their spells or some crafting classes that used them as a part of crafting, so they still had some value with players, aside from the utility of avoiding bartering. Aside from gold coins there were apparently blue copper coins and silver coins, with some rumours about there being coins of higher value then gold. Each of the gold coins was about the length of the tip of her thumb, and weighed less than fifty grams. As such, the whole sack was around eight to ten kilograms, and she couldn't imagine lugging around that much weight just to go shopping. She wrapped the coins and the breastplate back up and placed them into her bag. With the room now stripped of the only things it had besides dust, she moved back out to the main hall.
Directly opposite to the room she exited was an identical door, and she hoped that if there was another old man inside, she would be able to read his books this time. Opening the door, she was hit by a wave of heat and the smell of sulphur. The smell would have been far worse had she not had her sense of smell dulled by breathing in dust. Inside the room she found a fountain larva pouring into a pool and draining down a pipe in the centre of the pool. On the opposite side of the room was an identical looking fountain, but that one sloshed out semi-frozen water. Directly Between the two, an anvil was set up with a table arrayed with a range of crafting tools behind it. The wall directly opposite the door, adjacent to the two fountains, was a bed set up beside two luscious vegetable gardens. Sleeping on the bed, which was apparently padded with plant leaves, was a muscular greying old man, whose every section of visible skin seemed covered in scars from cuts and burns, though mostly burns. On her entry, the old man woke up and looked at her with a wide, toothy smile.
"You're a bit late, I finished the request so long ago that I've melted it down and reforged it several times over since. Not that that's much of a problem, this version's much better than the first one I made, and perfecting it helped me pass the time. Your boss paid in advance, so just pick it up and leave. It's the one wrapped in corn leaves next to the water. Now, I spent too long at the forge and need to rest. If you have any more requests, they'll have to wait for another day."
Not giving her an opportunity to explain, the man lay back down and seemed to sleep the moment he did. With that kind of quick sleeping, she would normal have assumed he was faking, but when she walked up to examine him, he definitely seemed to be entirely out. Considering apparently anyone else entering the temple would fall asleep, Lotus figured the real owner of whatever was being ordered would never be able to pick it up, and if the state of the main hall was anything to go by, the customer had likely already died of old age. As such, she walked over to the fountain to take a look at whatever her new item was. Unwrapping the leaves, she found herself looking at a sword that seemed more art then weapon. That wasn't to say that it looked impractical, but rather the workmanship and material formed a beautiful weapon. It was a kris longsword with a golden centre with streaks of red flicking out along the waiving, sharp edge. A fuller ran a third of the blade's length, despite how incredibly thin the weapon was, and the fuller was filled with delicate runic patterns. Despite how thin it looked, and how little it seemed to weigh, it didn't seem to bend or flex at all, and seemed incredibly strong to her untrained eye. It was the kind of weapon that wouldn't have been used in the real world, but with the mechanics of a game, it was a legendary treasure. Although she didn't use longswords, and neither of her classes had the proficiency for it, she knew she wanted to keep it. She threw it immediately into her left hand storage glove, replacing the stone she had kept in there as a place-holder, and hurried to leave the temple before the smith realised his mistake.
