THE RISE OF WHITE CONQUEROR

Chapter 85: Storage Items

"...Should’ve taken those survival shows more seriously," she muttered. "And my mana’s not regenerating faster either... ugh." She rubbed her forehead, clearly done with overthinking.

"Fuck it. Let’s go this way," she said, pointing in a completely random direction. "I’ll just follow my gut..."

Just before taking the first step, she paused. Kei glanced back one last time at the pile of ashes left behind, the remains of the Crow still there slowly getting dissipated by the winds, the lingering proof of what had happened here. Her lips parted slightly, and a quiet heaviness settled in her chest.

"...Goodbye," she said softly, sadness threading through her voice. Then she turned away. This time, she didn’t look back.

They walked on slowly, unevenly through unfamiliar surroundings that felt vast and indifferent. The ground beneath her feet changed from rocky to sandy, the air growing colder with each step. After what felt like far too long, Kei finally stopped. She looked around again. Nothing. No signs. No direction. Just endless terrain stretching out before her.

Her brows furrowed as she thought, cluelessly with tiredness creeping her thoughts.

’I did walk off... but where am I even going, haha... shit, I don’t know...

And can’t he be just a little less heavy... I’m practically dragging this guy along’

Kei glanced down at Kelly’s feet scraping against the ground, leaving faint marks in the dirt. She let out a tired sigh and paused, thinking hard really hard about where she should go next. Nothing came to mind.

"...Whatever," she muttered, thoroughly exasperated. In the end, she walked off in yet another random direction, convincing herself somehow that this was a calculated decision. Maybe the human mind was just really good at making excuses, dressing up every stupid choice it made with logic, all just to feel a little less foolish.

However, it didn’t take long before she was forced to make another decision. Dragging around what was essentially dead weight was exhausting, and Kei could feel her stamina slipping fast. She needed a place to rest somewhere defensible. Her eyes scanned the barren surroundings.

’Uhhmm... that rock is pretty big... We could stay near it, she thought, but if something attacks, we’d be completely exposed’

Her gaze shifted toward the jagged openings carved into the rocky terrain

’So, a cave is the only valid option Good...’ then came the real problem. ’But there are so many caves which one do I choose...’

She stood there for a moment, torn between the dark mouths of stone, each one looking just as unwelcoming and just as dangerous as the next.

Still stuck in her dilemma, Kei began digging through her memories, trying to recall any useful knowledge about choosing a decent place to rest.

’Uhhh... whatever’, she thought.

’This one looks good enough. No signs of anything inside... empty. And the river’s nearby, so the water source is basically perfect’

She nodded to herself.

’Doesn’t everyone say you should build a home near water? Yeah... this works. Definitely works’

It was, unsurprisingly, a decision fuelled more by instinct than patience. Trusting her so-called gut, Kei dragged Kelly toward the cave. The moment she crossed the threshold and felt the solid stone enclosure around her, a sense of security washed over her. Without a second thought, she dropped Kelly onto the ground and let herself slide down the cave wall, her back hitting the cold stone.

A long, exhausted sigh escaped her lips as the tension finally left her body. After closing her eyes for a moment, Kei opened them again and looked at Kelly, her gaze lingering as if she were weighing something in her mind.

"I can’t deal with all this alone... I might need him," she muttered. "Hmmm... tch."

With another tired sigh and an irritated click of her tongue, she slipped her hand beneath her skirt, reaching toward her inner thigh.

Click.

The faint sound of something being undone echoed softly through the empty cavern. Kei withdrew her hand and looked down at what she was holding a small, bean-sized pouch secured to a slim strap, designed to fit snugly against her thigh. She stared at it for a second, her expression conflicted, before tightening her grip as if she had finally made up her mind.

The small bean may have looked unremarkable at first glance, but in truth it was anything but ordinary. It was a spatial storage bag, a treasure bestowed only upon a chosen few. This particular one had been given directly by the Pope himself, and only to those students whose potential stood out even among a class already overflowing with monsters. Kei was one of them.

The space contained within the bag was vast roughly a five-by-five-by-three meter pocket, large enough to store the contents of an entire room. Weapons, supplies, food, equipment everything could be neatly stored away, weightless and hidden from the outside world. For comparison, even the finest spatial items available on the market usually held no more than the volume of a small wooden chest.

The reason was simple, creating spatial storage artifacts was prohibitively expensive. To craft even the most basic version required extremely rare materials, many of which could only be obtained from high-level dungeons or ancient ruins. On top of that, the process demanded a craftsman proficient in space-related magic or skills, an ability so rare that even entire kingdoms might only have handful of such individual if they were lucky. And even with all the right materials and talent, the crafting process itself took months, sometimes years, of painstaking work. Only top-tier craftsmen could attempt it, and failure meant the total loss of all materials involved.

Because of this, spatial storage items were luxuries reserved almost exclusively for royalty, the highest nobles, and a handful of elite individuals. Their value was so immense that even possessing one could invite envy, resentment, or outright hostility. That was precisely why the Pope had acted in secret.

Rather than publicly rewarding Kei and the others and risking division within the class, he had personally distributed these bags in private as a gesture of quiet support, trust, and goodwill. A way of saying that he believed in their future without placing a target on their backs or sowing discord among their peers.