Specific families?
"Sage families?" Nero blurted out. "No, wait, that doesn't make sense. The sage families are recent, and shouldn't have anything to do with the Vault or the Eldrim… unless the very requirement to become a sage is to be from one of those families to begin with."
Nero's brain started to work overtime, as he sensed as if he was on the verge of a realisation, but he couldn't quite reach it. He could feel that he was on the precipice of some grand realisation, but he needed just a little more push to get there. He turned to look towards Gabriel.
"You are both, simultaneously right and wrong," Gabriel said, as he looked at the dark berserkers trying to break in. They'd never succeed.
"Do we need to do this now?" Arter suddenly interrupted. "Who knows what Jessie is doing? We need to find her and stop her."
"Feel free to go ahead," Nero said. "But I need to understand the situation first."
Maximilian didn't speak, but he was also clearly extremely interested in finding out more. He had before him a once in a lifetime opportunity. No, not once in a lifetime. Once in a billion lifetimes! How many people would kill to get into a Vault was unimaginable! He could not squander this opportunity because he didn't understand something!
Moreover, while he came from a powerful family, with his father being the owner of Maxim's card shop, it was nowhere near that of a sage family. If there was any hope of him gaining anything, he had to grasp it.
Ultimately, Arter did not move.
"You are right," Gabriel explained, "because Vaults have nothing to do with recently powerful families. Instead, only certain, very few, very old families stand to gain from Vaults. But old does not mean powerful, and in most cases, such families already no longer exist.
"But you are wrong because… even if the sage families are new, all they need to do is marry someone from those families, and integrate their bloodline within their own descendants. For example, my own Anzem family is one such family, which is why they intermarry with the Kade family so often. In a way, the Kade family has claimed the Anzem family under its umbrella.
At the same time, they've ensured that all their future generations can benefit from the Vaults.
"I don't think there is a single sage family which hasn't done something similar, though in most cases, they just absorb the family directly. Not every family is as strong or influential as mine, being able to resist being absorbed completely."
Something in Nero's mind clicked.
"I suppose it's not just sage families that are interested in these old families, huh?" Nero mused out loud.
Various scenes began to play in Nero's mind, connecting to one another. This new context added a whole new dimension to various events that had happened through. Conversations replayed in his mind, and the meanings he took from them suddenly changed.
"This is a huge secret," Gabriel said. "This kind of stuff doesn't get out. Anyone who knows gets… put down. Literally, the only reason I can even tell you all of this is because we're inside a Vault. Being inside a Vault is one of the only few ways I can ever even mention the word Vault at all, that's how intense my oath is. I'm sure it's exactly the same for Arter.
"But… I suppose it is possible that some people may learn of this through unorthodox sources. In that case, it would make sense that they too would try to marry people from such families."
"Or, if they somehow predict the arrival of some ruins, then they could get rid of the competition," Nero murmured, his voice too low to be heard.
He recalled the day his brother had been sent to a cursed zone. It was so sudden. Too sudden. There was no news prior, and no opportunity to appeal the sentence. Yet, somehow, Patrick knew he was about to be sent away.
Not only did he know that, he had the confidence to survive and come back, so much so that he married Irene.
He recalled his mothers injury. His father told him that someone had purposefully targeted her, blocking her path as a card master. At the same time, the nature of that injury prevented her from having more children.
Nero remembered suddenly learning he had an uncle, his moms brother, though his father had a low opinion of him. But he later learned that his uncle had not eloped, as his father originally mentioned, but had been chased away.
Nero's father told him that his mothers family, the Soren family, was being targeted most likely because of the Radix Augmentation. But what if… what if it had nothing to do with that? What if someone was just eliminating any potential competitors for the Vault?
Speaking of Radix Augmentation, it was unlike any card he had ever seen before. Its secrets had literally allowed his parents to speed their way to the Arcanist level, and it had strengthened Nero's body by absorbing something from cursed beings. He had long wondered how his mother's family had gotten their hands on such a thing?
But what if it wasn't something they had discovered… but something their family had from the very beginning?
The current calendar year was 997V, but Lumina fell nearly 1210 years ago. That meant there was a 213 year gap between the fall of this city, and the discovery of Eldrim cards. How had humans survived in this cursed world all those years? Could their survival… still be linked to the Eldrim?
Because if it did, it suddenly seemed probable that the Soren family… had directly received that card from the Eldrim themselves. This very research facility proved that the Eldrim accepted humans as research assistants, and not only as test specimens.
Nero was making a lot of conjectures, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed probable. If his family was being targeted, then his survival initially can be explained by the additional protection provided by his parents after his mother assumed that Patrick had been targeted because of her.
-exclusive
But it wasn't as if he hadn't faced his own difficulties and odd situations. Even if he assumed that the attack on AAB had been completely coincidental, and they just happened to attack the building the very day he visited, he had experienced too many other coincidences.
No matter how Nero tried to justify it to himself, he found it hard to believe that he would ever be so mentally obtuse as to go and scream at a sage, or that everyone in that area would be so distracted that he would be allowed to approach a sage unimpeded. Or that, after getting yelled at, the sage actually took a liking to him.
He was well aware that, even when he was working for major Liam Carver, he was indirectly associated with a sage. After all, Liam was from a sage family. There was also that unexplained assassination attempt he faced just a few hours ago.
Nero knew that he had little to no evidence, and a lot of the things he was assuming were just that - assumptions. But there was one very easy way to confirm his hypothesis. If only certain families could gain approval from a Vault, all he needed to do was scan his hand. Everything would be revealed.
"But anyway," Gabriel continued, not noticing the distraction Nero was experiencing, "much more important than which families can gain benefits from a Vault, is why they can stand to benefit from a Vault. Not to mention, what is a Vault to begin with. I can't say exactly why since no one is exactly certain, but I think, by now, you can venture the same guess everyone else has."
"It's because humans used to live with, or maybe work for the Eldrim in these cities," Nero said, as if he was stating a fact.
"Yes, and it is commonly believed that the old families whose bloodline is required to access the Vaults directly worked for the Eldrim, or maybe were linked to the Vaults in some way."
Nero suddenly remembered that, when he was taking the test for access rights both in the cathedral and in the research facility, one of his listed properties was 'genetic markers'.
Now, Nero was not too knowledgeable when it came to genetics, after all he hadn't even finished high school, it sounded like some kind of identifying tag in his genes - a tag that the various machines in this city could read.
"As for what a Vault is, well there are a few guesses for that as well. The name Vault was actually given by Emperor Iskunder, and is not necessarily what this place was called by the Eldrim. As far as I know, this is just one corner of the Eldrim's research - a very small corner - that is focused towards humans. Which is why the things that can be found here can be used by humans as well."