"Whew," he muttered, wiping gunk off his cheek. "That was one heck of a fight. I just hope brain goo isn't acidic."
He leaned against the damp wall, catching his breath, wiping smears of blood and something disturbingly brain-like from his cheek. "Disgusting... I need a shower. A very long, very hot shower," he muttered, his voice bouncing back at him in the hollow tunnel.
He took a slow walk back to where the decapitated body of Hilk-daq lay. Her grotesque face still frozen in that last moment of shock. The remnants of the earth golem had turned into a harmless pile of dirt beside her.
"Now," he muttered, stretching his sore arms, "about that treasure…"
Alex turned and wandered deeper into the narrow tunnel. The air changed as he walked—less foul, less humid.
He ignited a fresh fireball in his palm and scanned the area. Something was… off. The vibration in the air had changed, like a low hum had stopped humming. He walked further down the cave tunnel, past the scorched stone and half-collapsed walls caused by their fight.
He began inspecting the walls, tapping and touching with a sensitivity that went beyond human. His perception had once again increased—he could sense vibrations in solid stone and detect hollow spaces by the faintest difference in the way sound bounced back to his ears.
And then he saw it—a thin crack in the stone wall glowing faintly with blue lines, almost like veins. Curious, he reached out and touched the wall. It buzzed under his fingers.
Then, with a soft grinding sound, the stone slid aside.
"Okay… either I just activated a secret passage," he muttered, eyes lighting up, "or I accidentally triggered a death trap."
Luckily, it was the former.
The secret wall revealed a small, domed chamber no larger than a family hut. Inside was a stone pedestal, covered in dust, spiderwebs, and—oddly enough—a single old military helmet on top of a skeleton. Japanese design, rusted and cracked with age. Alex narrowed his eyes.
"What is this? Indiana Jones meets Samurai Jack?"
He stepped in cautiously, holding his fireball high. The chamber was clearly manmade. There were wooden crates on one side, half-rotted but still intact, stacked beside a stone bench. A journal lay open on the bench, its pages yellowed and flaking.
Alex's eyes landed on a row of large clay jars, lined neatly on a stone shelf carved into the wall. Six of them. All sealed.
He approached one, brushing away cobwebs and dust. "Let's see what you're hiding."
"Please don't be fermented pickles," he muttered as he cracked open the first one.
Instead of brine and cabbage, a glittering chik-chik-chik greeted him.
He reached in slowly and pulled out a fistful of glittering stones.
Diamonds. "So, this is how my pure luck blessing work." He smiled
Not chips. Not industrial bits. Whole. Smooth. Blinding in the firelight.
"Holy…" he whispered, blinking. "...shit."
Hundreds of them. Clean, perfectly cut, glimmering even under the dull light of his fireball.
"WHAT." He opened the next jar. More diamonds. Then another. Same.
"Okay, okay," Alex said, now speaking to the air. "I'm not dreaming. Six jars… a hundred in each… I've just found the treasure of a lifetime!"
His brain scrambled to keep up. Where did a soldier get this much diamond? Smuggling? Wartime plunder? Some secret operation buried by history? And why leave it here?
He turned toward the bench and lifted the journal, trying to make sense of the old Japanese writing. Thankfully, the sentient works another magic, a translation inside his head.
"To the one who finds this vault… I am Hideaki Sugimura, lieutenant, Imperial Japanese Army. I was left behind during the war, forgotten even by my command. I took what little wealth I found—diamonds—and buried them in this cave. I waited for decades, living like a ghost. These are my last days. If you are reading this, then I am already dust. The blade… and the small black box are not mine. I found them buried in the cave. I do not understand the metal. It sings to me. Perhaps it is cursed, but it has kept me alive."
Alex whistled. "A WWII survivor turned cave dragon hoarder? That's new."
He gently lifted a wrapped bundle behind the jars. The cloth peeled away with a puff of musty air.
Inside was a katana.
It was old, but the blade itself gleamed like polished starlight. Not a single speck of rust. The metal shimmered with an iridescence he had never seen before, shifting color as he tilted it—blue, silver, almost like the moon's reflection on water.
He picked it up and felt the weight—light, but incredibly solid. He unsheathed it, and even in the dim cave, the blade seemed to glow faintly.
"What are you made of, huh?" he murmured, marveling.
"I don't know what kind of metal this is, but… it's not from around here." He gave the blade a slow swing. It cut the air with barely a sound.
Next to it, a dagger of the same make—shorter, meaner-looking, but forged with the same metal. It practically hummed in his hand.
"Well, well," Alex muttered, grinning like a schoolboy at Christmas. "Looks like Santa came early."
Then his eyes landed on something even stranger—a small black wooden box. No handle. No keyhole. Just solid, old, and unsettling. Again, the material is not ordinary wood.
Alex tried to open it. Nothing. He shook it. Still nothing.
"Okay, spooky box with no opening," he said, placing it on the bench. "Let me guess. I have to prove my worth first, or chant in ancient tongues, or solve a riddle from a thousand-year-old monk?"
The box did not respond. Obviously.
"Come on, what's in you?" he asked the box. "Are you booby-trapped? Cursed? Or just shy?"
He placed it next to the katana and dagger. "We'll deal with you later."
Alex thought about the owner of the diamond. An abandoned soldier, alone in enemy territory, had discovered this cave. And while the ancient creatures slumbered in deeper levels, he had survived. Maybe they saw no threat in him. Maybe the weapons he found scared them off. Or maybe they just pitied a dying man with no more fight left.
"That's how they got it," Alex said out loud, his voice soft. "He found the treasure. He used the blade. Then he died. And the creatures moved in afterward. They didn't care about the treasure… they probably didn't even know what it was."
He looked back at the blade. "But they must've feared this," he whispered.
There was something sacred about it. Something that wasn't just power, but memory.
"Man," Alex chuckled, "this guy could have written a novel or, you know, told someone about the treasure. But hey, I'm not complaining."
He glanced around the chamber, then sat down on the bench beside the box, resting his body.
He glanced back at the skeleton.
Not a lucky man.
He considered gold bars. Coins. Even scrolls. But diamonds?
This was more complicated.
Not in terms of carrying it—he could lift a truck if he really needed to. The problem was the bag. Could it hold the weight? Would the seams survive?
He carefully poured the diamonds into his bag, then the strange little box, pausing once to pet the strained zipper as if to say, You can do it, old friend.
Alex slung the bag onto his back, picked up the blades, and moved.
"Guess I'll hike it out the old-fashioned way."
And with that, Alex walked out of the hidden chamber, heavier but grinning—half from excitement, half from sheer disbelief at how insane his life had become.
He scrambled out of the cave with the speed of a mountain goat on espresso. The weight on his back didn't slow him—it only made him more cautious. He didn't want to drop a single glittering shard. Who knew if cave gnomes might show up once he left?
Once outside, blinking against the sunlight, he didn't look back. He made his way through the forest, leaping from tree to tree with animal grace, muttering under his breath.
"Treasure found. Sword acquired. Backpack intact. Now, how the hell am I going to fence a hundred pounds of expertly cut diamonds without ending up on someone's international watchlist?"
It was a question for another day.
"I need a bath, and then I need to sleep the whole day."
The diamonds could wait.