26

The Witcher: The last King of the elves

Chapter 26 - The Past

The information about the treasure of the elven capital was only told through the knowledge the Tree of Life delivered to Thranduil after he nourished it with what it needed to survive.

It wasn’t that the ancient king had intentionally wanted to keep it secret. It was because when the Elven Empire collapsed, the entire capital had been looted, not to mention the national treasury. Thranduil would be lucky to find half a gold coin.

Therefore, the ancient king had not taken the initiative to mention anything about the treasure.

If the king had said something, he feared Thranduil might make the wrong decision to come to this place full of dangers.

From the moment Thranduil arrived here, he had been thinking about the treasure house and also wanted to try his luck. Although he knew the treasury might be cleaner than the Water of Life itself, he was still reluctant to leave without taking a look.

“The stories said the treasure lay beneath the castle, but now everything is buried under ruins.” Thranduil released his spiritual consciousness to search for the bone temple and the ruins of the nearby buildings.

After a long while, he found nothing. “It must have been buried quite deep.”

Thranduil frowned, expanded his magical power, and sharpened his senses. “No matter what, I will find the entrance to the treasure house, even if I have to destroy this place.”

As he spoke, Thranduil waved the magic staff in his hand. Suddenly, a fireball nearly ten meters in diameter shot rapidly toward the bone temple before him.

By now, Thranduil was so powerful that he could create a massive crater beneath the ground.

Boom!

With just one swing of his staff, the earth began to shake.

Suddenly, a tremendous roar resounded. Terrifying waves of fire surged in all directions. Wherever the fiery wave passed—whether ruins of buildings or piles of bones—everything was reduced to ashes.

Then Thranduil unleashed several fireballs in succession, quickly destroying the bone temple and burning the ruins of the surrounding structures.

When the flames subsided, what appeared before Thranduil was scorched earth.

There was no entrance to the treasure house in sight.

Yet Thranduil did not give up.

He waved his magic staff once more.

In an instant, blazing dragons more than twenty meters long appeared in the sky.

Although these fire dragons were products of magic, their presence still revealed a power difficult to describe with words.

That power, under Thranduil’s control, descended to the earth like thunder and crashed against the charred ground.

Suddenly, the earth shook even more violently.

The terrifying wave of fire, accompanied by smoke and dust, spread instantly for hundreds of meters. Not even Thranduil himself escaped the reach of the very power he had unleashed.

Within seconds, he was engulfed in scorching flames, and even his figure could not be seen. It wasn’t until much later that the fire finally faded.

At that moment, Thranduil’s figure reappeared, and unlike the surroundings, he was completely unharmed by the destruction.

Even the clothes on his body bore no damage. When the flames approached within several meters of him, they automatically curved around his form.

Thranduil walked toward the spot where the fire dragon had struck, and there, a massive pit more than two hundred meters wide had appeared.

He searched the vast pit carefully.

After a long while, he finally discovered a concave position. Once he cleared away the rubble from the depression, a dark passage appeared before his eyes.

The passage was several meters wide and clearly dug out by hand. Not only were there steps leading straight down the corridor, but also copper candlesticks long extinguished on both sides.

Now, the candlesticks were covered with cobwebs and dust.

“This is the place.” Thranduil waved his staff again.

A fireball half a meter in diameter appeared at the top of his staff, illuminating the path ahead. Then Thranduil descended the steps into the depths of the passage.

The passage was not long, barely a hundred meters.

After passing through, Thranduil saw a slightly larger space ahead.

Before him stood a stone gate. One side of the gate was completely open, while the other was broken.
“This is the true entrance to the treasure house.”

Thranduil stepped forward and reached out to touch the open stone gate.

A faint light could vaguely be seen flickering across its surface.

It was an elven magical barrier, one that could resist magical attacks and verify elven bloodlines… Unfortunately, the barrier had long since broken and decayed, and its power had almost disappeared.

At that moment, Thranduil seemed to recall something.

“How many energy crystals would it take to repair the previous magical restriction?”

“[This is a magical restriction imposed by several masters once considered gods in their time. It requires 300,000 magic crystals.]”

Thranduil was quite shocked.

Originally, he had wanted to repair the magical restriction and see if he could learn something from it. In any case, he already carried the inheritance of vast knowledge; there were few things left he still needed to learn.

But when he heard the system’s response, he immediately abandoned the thought.

The magical restrictions set by those beings of the past must contain immense “knowledge,” but it would be better to wait until he had the resources.

Right now, Thranduil could not afford to waste crystals.

“Let’s continue…” Thranduil passed through the stone gate and entered the treasure house.

It was an enormous underground cavern. Thranduil summoned more than a dozen massive fireballs and suspended them above the cave, but even so, he still could not illuminate its full expanse.

“Back then, this place must have been filled with the treasures of the Elven Empire, no doubt about it.” After saying that, he murmured nostalgically: “There should have been countless gold coins, gems, magical metals, utensils of gold and silver…”

Thranduil whispered to himself as he walked through the dark treasury. Each time he advanced a certain distance, he conjured another giant fireball to light the nearby area. Under his perfect control, all the fireballs remained suspended above the treasure hall.

As long as his magical power did not run dry, these fireballs would not go out.

No one knew how much time had passed before Thranduil finally finished exploring the entire treasury.

Just as the ancient king had said, he couldn’t find even half a gold coin. Everything in the treasure house had been plundered.

“Damn humans and vile races, what do they want with things they cannot even use?” Thranduil complained. He had the system to support him—so long as he could pay with energy crystals, anything could be restored.

In the end, the entire treasury was indeed cleaner than the Water of Life.

He searched once more, as if unwilling to give up, leaving no corner of the vault untouched, but in the end, he found nothing.

“Nothing…”

“It’s better to return and continue finding crystals…” Thranduil adjusted his disheartened mood and prepared to leave the treasury.

He was somewhat disappointed at not finding the legacy of the Elven Empire, but it wasn’t hard for him to accept. The old tree had warned him beforehand, and he had been mentally prepared.

But at this moment—

Thranduil suddenly discovered stars appearing before his eyes without him realizing it.

There was no trace of magical fluctuation within those starlights.

He tried touching them with his staff, but it simply passed through, as though they were illusions.

Gradually, more and more stars appeared around him, rising from the ground beneath his feet.

Erupting from the earth and floating into the air.

“What’s happening?” Thranduil was confused and instinctively moved toward the stone gate.

If he saw anything unusual, he would flee immediately.

A moment later, Thranduil looked down in extreme surprise as the starlight floating in the air began merging together and gradually revealed a series of illusory figures.

Among those figures were pure, beautiful elves and giants measuring dozens of meters tall.

There were colorful fairy dragons and snow-white unicorns.

There were also giant birds burning with golden flames.

“That giant bird should be the Phoenix Guardian so often mentioned in the stories! An intelligent race that also belonged to the elves, with extremely powerful combat abilities!”

Thranduil was thrilled. The scene before him was far too wondrous. As time went on, more and more figures appeared, all from the camp of the elves. He also saw elven dragons, forest giants, elemental elves, flower elves, and druids.