Chapter 26: Deathtouched Catacombs, Part One
"The catacomb is located near the place where we fought the mariner, some time ago. Do you perhaps remember the place where the living jar warrior was stuck?"
D nodded.
"Great, it would be best if you could teleport us there."
"Alright, then let's start from there, and you will just lead the way.", said D.
Therefore, a few moments later, the two tarnished arrived at the location where they had to help Alexander out previously. From there, they made their way towards the encampment of some Godrick soldiers. Once D and Max got close, the two were stopped by a soldier.
"Hey! You there! Stop! Identify yourself and state your reason for coming."
When the duo heard his shouts, Max was the one to respond.
"Hello, please do not attack, we don't have any ill intentions. We just would like to go up this hill here and in order to do that, we would like to use this path which leads up there.", Max pointed towards the path which leads towards the catacomb.
In the meantime, the soldier was joined by a few of his comrades. With his friends behind his back, the soldier got a boost in his confidence, which was reflected by his next actions.
"Hmm, I see. Well, if you want to use this path, you are going to have to pay a fee, or...", while he said that he put his hand on his sword on his waist, threatening them with the obvious.
Max had a semi surprised, semi annoyed look on his face and thought for a short moment. If possible, he wants to avoid fighting this whole encampment for the time being, because there really isn't anything to gain. Therefore, Max responded:
"And how much would that fee be?"
"4 000 runes for each one of you. This small amount surely won't be a problem, right?", answered the soldier with a greedy smile.
As he said that, the atmosphere became a lot more tense than before. Max then took out his sacred seal, in preparation of a battle. In addition, when D saw his actions, he also took out his seal and gripped the hilt of his Inseparable Sword, ready to draw it out. As Max saw that D was also getting ready to fight, he said:
"How about 200 runes in total? I would advise you to take it and live another day. Or we pass without paying anything and while we do that I will take your head. How about that?"
Hearing this, the greedy soldier became angry and shouted:
"I have given you a chance, but you leave me with no other choice but to strip the runes from your corpses. Fellow soldiers atta..."
Max didn't let him finish his sentence, as he quickly dashed at him and slashed with his sword, aiming at his head. The soldier couldn't react in time, in face of the speed at which Max attacked. However, he kept his head, as the reach of the Bloodhound's fang was a little bit too short, but it still sliced his throat, so the end result was still the same.
After his initial first attack, Max immediately continued attacking the other soldiers. They, too, didn't manage to put up a fight, as for them everything happened too fast. They died, before they even managed to draw their swords.
In the meantime, on the other side of the encampment, the dogs started barking loudly, alerting everyone left and then ran towards the position where D and Max were. In response, the hunter of the dead took a few steps forward and cast the Beast Claw incantation. The incantation conjured five offensive vertical waves that traveled forward at high speed. Once one of these waves hit a dog, a huge wound appeared on their body. It was like a huge claw just ripped open their body.
D cast the incantation twice. The first time was in order to deal with the dogs and the second was for the incoming soldiers. The soldiers, unfortunately, didn't experience a quick death, because when they got hit by the beast claw incantation, they didn't die, but instead suffered serious injuries.
Basically, they lost their legs and were on the ground screaming in pain. At the same time, a Godrick Knight was seen rushing to the location of slaughter. Previously, he was resting, and then he was disturbed by the barks of the dogs. Initially, he chose to ignore them and let his underlings quiet them down. However, when he heard the sound of the Beast Claw incantation and then the screams which soon followed, he only then realized that they were being attacked. He then immediately grabbed his Knight's Greatsword and the Gilded Greatshield.
Seeing that most of his underlings had lost a leg, he became enraged and spoke with an angry voice to D and Max:
"You! Who the hell are you? Why did you attack us?"
"Who we are? That's not important. As for the why, well initially we didn't want to fight at all, but one of your soldiers wanted me to pay a ridiculously huge fee, and he didn't want to lower it, so we had no other choice.", answered Max.
"Don't lie to me. Everybody knows that, if somebody wants to pass a military encampment, one has to pay a fee. If you didn't want to fight, you would have paid."
'Well, I guess he has a point, but I just have 500 runes on me at the moment, how am I supposed to pay so much?', thought Max.
At the end, Max chose not to respond, but instead cast Flame Sling and threw it at him.
The knight, saw the fireball coming, and he blocked it with his Greatshield. Then he advanced towards Max, who in response retreated back, but he angled his retreat more towards the right. In doing so he is also distancing himself from D, the goal behind his actions was to expose the knight's back to D. Unfortunately, the knight noticed his tactic and in return stopped advancing and also took a few steps back, while blocking the fireballs with his shield.
A few more fireballs later, Max saw that they didn't have a big effect, so he stopped casting. He realized that all the incantations he knows are useless when he is going against somebody with a Greatshield.
'Hmm, I need some new incantations...', thought Max.
Facing the two tarnished, the knights' situation wasn't easy. He knew that if he makes even one mistake, that it will be his last one. While his shield gives him a great defense, it has its downsides. The most notable one would be his mobility. As he looked at their armor and the aura they were radiating, he knew that they weren't amateurs. The one who threw those fireballs at him doesn't really worry him, because the knight is convinced that Max would surely retreat if he went towards him again, but instead, the concerning one was the one with the strange armor.
He hasn't made a move since the start of their fight, but the knight is sure that it was him, who inflicted those horrible injuries on his underlings. After thinking for a while longer, the Knight then made the decision to retreat from this fight. Therefore, he began moving backwards, but without letting his guard down and with his shield up.
When his underlings saw this, they screamed in desperation:
"No Sir! Please don't leave us alone! Take us with you!"
The knight ignored their pleas and told himself :
'A good soldier knows when the battle is lost, besides I am not even protecting anything important here. I don't want to risk my life for nothing.', as he fled from the battle with the wish to live longer
Max didn't expect the knight to flee and didn't have anything against it. Then he proceeded to take the suffering soldiers out of their misery by quickly killing them and looting their bodies. He got around 400 runes from them.
"Thank you, D. Here, take this. ", Max gave him half of the 400 runes." To be honest, I wasn't sure whether you would engage in the battle, but I'm glad you did"
"Not a problem, let's continue.", answered D emotionlessly.
Soon they arrived before the entrance of the catacomb. Max then opened the wooden door and once they entered the catacomb, the eye he got from Gurranq began to tremble intensely. This caught Max completely off guard as he forgot about it.
As D saw Max panic, he couldn't help but to chuckle a bit and then said:
"Relax, my eye is also trembling. It seems that here really is a death root."
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone