Castle Morne: Part 4

Under the beautiful night sky, castle Morne was completely silent. The stunning moonlight illuminated the sky. Every living being was sleeping soundly, except two figures. They had been waiting for quite a while for all activities to cease, and now finally, everything seemed to rest.

Edgar looked at Max, who in return nodded. Edgar, then took out his seal and silently casted Golden Vow, without alerting anybody. A feeling of warmth and strength spread throughout their bodies.

'After the battle, I have to make him teach me the Golden Vow incantation. It would be a shame if I couldn't learn it from him.', though Max.

Afterward, they dropped down on the wooden ledge, where a corpse with a Stonesword key was. Obviously, Max searched the corpse and took the key. In the meantime, Edward was already at the bottom, holding his halberd with both hands. Very soon Max joined him with the Bloodhounds Fang.

They each targeted a sleeping missbegotten. Therefore, the duo sneaked up on them as close as possible and then beheaded them in their sleep. Unfortunately, this created a lot of noise, causing the other creatures to wake up. From this point onwards, thing progressed very quickly.

As they agreed on before, Edward will target the third missbegotten at the "bridge" and Max will check the room on their right, in order to prevent them being ambushed from behind. Edward didnt have any problems on his part, because he rushed up quickly enough to the "servant" before he could react. Max on his part experienced some issues, because it was really dark in the room, which made it really difficult for Max to find the missbegotten. This hesitation of a few seconds gave the creature the chance to confront the tarnished.

It jumped at Max aiming its blade at his face. Max barely managed to dodge in time and counter-attacked by swinging his sword at the missbegotten. The sword successfully cut its leg, however the "servant" didn't really care as it continued its attack immediately, not giving Max anytime to recover. That's why Max wasn't able to dodge and could only block with his sword.

Even though it was the first time Max blocked an attack with his sword, he didn't have too many issues following and predicting the movement and pattern of the sword. Max continued to block another three attacks. Then, once it stopped, he repaid the missbegotten by attacking himself. In response, it jumped back, but Max quickly closed the distance between them as he quickstepped towards it. With the wall behind it, the missbegotten had nowhere to escape and met its end with his blade.

Max then took the runes from it and noticed a slime nearby. These slimes can be dangerous if they get on you, and ,additionally, they are very tedious to kill. Therefore, Max just decided to block the entrance to the room and left.

Back outside, he met up with Edgar, who was watching the bigger missbegoten walk towards them menacingly with a huge axe. Max started to cast the Flame Sling incantation and then threw the fireball at it. In response, the missbegotten curled up and began to roll towards them.

When Max saw this, he hastily cast another fireball, unfortunately this didn't have a big effect on it, therefore he retreated back and started casting Flame Sling again. Edward however had a different approach. Instead of backing off, he walked towards the rolling missbegotten and made great use of the long reach of his halberd. He started spinning his halberd over his head in circles. On top of that, every time the halberd hit the missbegotten, he skillfully retreated, without losing the momentum. Doing this, he could hit it, safely from the distance and the misbegotten, couldn't do anything to him.

Eventually, the creature realized that, it had to change its approach. Therefore, the missbegotten stopped rolling and blocked the spinning strike from Edgar's halberd with its giant axe. Then it swung its giant axe over its shoulder and started to charge at Edgar. When he saw this, he had no other choice but to retreat as fast as possible.

He then regrouped with Max, who had stopped casting, the moment when the missbegotten started to charge at them once more. Then, once the "servant" left the "bridge", the duo finally had more space to use, and immediately started to try to encircle the missbegotten. Since they both ran in different directions, the missbegotten had to decide to follow one of them, this however left its back exposed for the other one. In this case, it chased after Edgar. Now, with its back exposed to Max, the tarnished managed to inflict a grave wound there.

The missbegotten screamed from the pain and turned around in rage and swung his axe at Max. This was the moment Edgar had been waiting for, as the missbegotten made his second fatal mistake today. By shifting its focus on Max, it left its back once more completely exposed. Therefore, the commander attacked and pierced the body with his halberd. His victim screamed, dropped the axe, and then managed to break off the top of the halberd that stuck out from its chest in rage. However, the screams died out a few seconds later, as Max finished it.

After the battle, Edgar took out his halberd and had a grave expression on his face. Killing this big missbegotten had cost him a huge price.

"Shit! This damn creature, destroyed my beloved halberd! Now I won't be able to continue fighting with it", said Edgar angrily, and threw his weapon away.

Max looked at him and said:"Just take the missbegottens weapon."

An annoyed look could be seen on Edgar's face.

"What do you think I was about to do? Continue fighting with my bare hands? Of course, I will take the Iron Cleaver. Even though, it had been used by these foul creatures, the weapon will serve its purpose."

Before they dropped down onto the roof below to continue, Max went firstly to the place where the big missbegotten initially was and climbed up the ladder nearby. Once he was up, he found a chest containing the Twinblade Talisman.

Afterward, the duo jumped down onto the roof and from there they had to climb down using the tree nearby as it would be too dangerous to jump down from that high. Then they continued on the path and had to make another few jumps, but soon enough they arrived at another top with a big hole. Once they got close, the duo could hear noises produced by multiple rats. Initially, Edgar didn't want to drop down into the rat's lair, but unfortunately there wasn't another way down. So, with no other choice, they used the wooden ledges to safely make their way down. Obviously they had no intention of fighting many rats in such a tight space, so the duo immediately ran out, and faced the rats outside. Conveniently, the rats came out one by one, therefore Max and Edgar easily massacred them.

Here Max remembered the first time he was here on a low leveled character, where he insisted to die many times to fight the rats, as he wanted to fight them inside.

Having arrived down here, all the way from the top, marks the last part of their plan. So they took a few moments to observe the area. A huge number of jellyfish could be seen around the beach and, alongside the smell of the sea, the cold wind, and the moonlight, created a somewhat peaceful atmosphere.

"It's quite peaceful, isn't it?", noted Max.

"Yes, indeed. But it is just the calm before the storm. The hardest part is just before us."added Edward; "Do you see the gate down there, I believe that that's where the Leonie missbegotten is."

"That's good, because I would rather want to avoid fighting it, when the jellyfish are around us."

"Yes, I agree with you. There shouldn't be any, once we pass the gate, but if there are some, we will have to eliminate them as quickly as possible, because if we get hit by their poisonous attack, it will be over for us."

"Are their poison attacks that dangerous? ", asked Max.

As Edgar heard this, he looked at him strangely.

"Don't you know? Getting poisoned by them is so painful, because the poison targets the nerve system explicitly. Once a soldier of mine got poisoned, after a while, he gouged his own eyes out, and dislocated his joints, because he couldn't handle the pain. Once that happened, we obviously put him out of his misery, but it was horrible watching him suffer. He-he, but that's also why it is really effective at extracting information out of our enemies.

Of course, after a while the poison also disables their ability to speak, but they usually blow the whistle before that happens. Sometimes, Just threatening them with the poison is also enough to break some of them. "

A helpless smile could be seen on Edgar's face. Max however had a frozen expression on his face as he just realized how dangerous his interaction with the jellyfish was before he entered the castle.