Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Seventeen

Travelling from the hamlet to the fishing village was not as easy as Adam had thought, because the eastern side of the Blue River was firmly within the reach of the Forlorn Castle and its long-ranged ballista artillery. They fired shadowy bolts several kilometres through the air and attempted to predict their journey across the rolling hills. The strikes landed within only a few metres of Chien and Natalia’s horses twice before Adam made the executive decision to lift both of them up into the air alongside Seo-Yoon. The pair didn’t protest this time, because neither wanted to be target practice for the forlorn army that guarded the castle.

Even after they passed beyond the reach of the ballistae, Adam didn’t put them back down and just continued flying towards their destination.

Since he didn’t have to keep pace with anyone, Adam was free to go as fast as possible, so they reached the old church quickly, continuing beyond it to find the place where a tributary of the Blue Vein crawled east and then south to wrap around a small fishing village nestled against the main part of the river further down.

He landed them in the centre of the village, which, like Silt, was raised on wooden stilts and lifted above the porous and unstable soil, its many legs anchored deep into the ground. Almost all of the village’s western edge hung over the rapidly-flowing blue water, and the only way in or out of the settlement was along a lifted bridge in the south-eastern corner that led safely away from the treacherous silt to more solid ground.

Adam was certain that they would’ve received a settlement notification for discovering the place if they had arrived here before it’s destruction, but unfortunately, they were far too late. Many of the buildings were smoking wrecks, and bodies were strewn across the place.

Despite its destruction, there was a strange heat rising from the village, and no sooner had Adam set down the others than he had to lift up into the air to escape its painful sting. He recognised the sensation as proximity to holy magic, so he switched to the aspirant’s cowl and was met with a golden haze on everything in sight.

A second later, Adam realised that it was strange for all of the corpses to have been left behind, and then Seo-Yoon said, “Everyone here is like Alisé. They’re glowing with the light of the true flame.”

Adam looked around and spotted a part of the village where the glow was densest. It was a simple blacksmith’s workshop and it had been left intact, despite almost all of the other houses being burnt to a crisp.

That must be where we were supposed to bring the broken blade.

Seo-Yoon noticed it too, and they moved towards it to investigate. The cause turned out to be quite simple. Within the workshop’s forge was the dead embers of a true flame. It had seemingly been kept alive with simple wood and not Centennial Oak, making its lifespan short and precarious, since it would require steady fuel and attention like any other normal flame. With its tender dead, it too had expired.

“Perhaps the true flame’s blessing spread to the people and their village because of long exposure?” Chien guessed.

“Coupled with the location, they were likely able to thwart the Forlorn Shadow for some time,” Adam said.

“We were still too late though,” Natalia pointed out. “Look.”

She pointed inside the blacksmith’s workshop, where a bearded man lay with three tainted arrows driven through him.

Adam sent his gauntlets into the building and pulled the corpse out where he could see. Like with Alisé body and the corpses of those Chien killed, Adam could not push his mana into the body, though he was still able to manually extract blood from the dead man, before returning him to the ground.

“Why do you insist on defiling the dead?” Chien asked, offended at what Adam had done.

“I’m a blood mage,” he replied. “I can glean things from his blood with a single touch.”

He pulled off his flame glove and poked his glass hand into the blood he’d extracted from the man.

Flashes of memories flowed through Adam’s mind, and, a moment later, he emerged from them with a deep exhale. The blacksmith’s name was Mallo, just like the one mentioned in the description of the broken blade. He had been the leader of the village, and he had been the first to die when the forlorn army attacked.

“This was the man we were looking for,” Adam told them. “He died two days ago.”

“How is anyone supposed to find the blade normally?” Natalia asked, clearly having wondered about it the entire way here.

“There are a lot of secrets hidden very well. Usually there’ll be some clue. I’m guessing if we found this place first, the blacksmith may have mentioned Alisé and her blade,” Adam replied.

“Since it’s quite obscure and access to the blacksmith ends with the second day, not to mention needing to defeat the marksman in the Hamlet, do you think that means the repaired blade would be really powerful? Perhaps some kind of weapon or relic that is very effective against the Forlorn Shadow?” Natalia speculated.

Adam nodded. “It’s quite possible, especially given the description on the broken blade. We may also have needed to rekindle the true flame and bring it here, which means having to find the flame on day one to light the brazier in Old Town.”

“Such secrets are surely made to distract,” Chien remarked.

His words reminded Adam of what Emelia had once said. “It’s almost always the same type who makes it to stage ten, those that are resilient to despair and don’t take unnecessary risks.”

The forlorn marksman is definitely designed to get players killed before they know they’re under attack, and thinking back on it, many of the secret fights and best hidden relics are ones that come with a lot of risk.

But that being said, anyone who does go through the hassle of all the secret hunting and succeeds will end up with more points and better items than everyone else. The chance of surviving is just much lower, so it feels more geared towards time-loopers.

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Although, Beck had been a secret seeker before obtaining the Self-Devouring Eye, but it just seemed a rarer personality type based on what Adam had seen from other time-loopers so far.

“Are we done here then?” Natalia asked.

Adam was pulled out of his thoughts. He was fairly sure there was nothing to be found in the dead settlement, but he consulted his compass just to be sure, and when he asked about quests, it actually gave him something.

They followed the golden needle to the intact corpse of an ancient fisherman, whose wrinkled and rail-thin body had been brought down by a single tainted arrow to the neck. Adam looked around and noticed that there were a lot of arrows all over the place. Every corpse they’d come across had died from the same attack.

The Shadow was so terrified of trying to use its foot soldiers to attack this place that it resorted to a ranged bombardment. I think that means using a true flame mist against it might be really effective. We’ll need to save as many flames as we can, to allow Seo-Yoon to buy us as much time as possible for the final fight.

Chien carefully turned the old man’s body to find a crinkled notebook full of ramblings about some kind of fish called the ‘Blue Vein Spirit’, which apparently swam up and down the river. According to the notes, it taunted the old man every time it passed the village. He had been trying to catch it for much of his adult life.

< < Quest Unlocked > >

< A Legendary Catch >

< Catch the Blue Vein Spirit >

Seo-Yoon laughed. “Shall we go fishing later?” she asked.

Beck will absolutely want to do this quest. I wonder what happens if you actually catch the fish.

No one had any interest in fishing besides her, so Adam instead reiterated his plan to go to the Forlorn Castle to deal with the judge and jailer.

“My rosary has not charged up sufficiently, so we will have to take out a lot of soldiers first,” Chien remarked.

“That won’t be a problem,” Adam replied.

“Do you know how they fight? The knights, I mean,” Natalia asked.

“The judge uses a mace and a magical talisman,” Adam said. “It’s got some controlling effects, and is quite powerful up close. The jailer uses chain whips and is quite fast, plus he’s in a narrow space, which makes him dangerous.”

“What about the twins you mentioned?” she went on.

“We’ll save them for tomorrow. We may also not have time to take down both the judge and jailer today, depending on how long the fights end up lasting.”

“Then let us not waste any time,” Chien said, suddenly impatient, which was out of character for him.

Adam looked to his compass again, making sure there wasn’t something they could do with the broken blade. It pointed to the blacksmith’s workshop like before, but without the blacksmith himself and likely a true flame to spare, they would have no way to repair the weapon.

Not even with the Necromancy skill could we revive him to do this for us, but perhaps the hammer that Nova told me Thea rewards in exchange for the vanity will enable someone to repair the fragments. I could also bring them to her after the stage and ask. I’d like to know what they end up making, since if it’s a sword relic and not a weapon, it could benefit me on the Fool as a workaround to not having weapons.

Adam lifted all of them up into the air after switching to his crown, and then they flew northeast to the Forlorn Castle, which loomed like a dark monster of stone crawling across the rolling green hills, unnatural darkness clinging to it. The Shadow’s territory had moved past the northern side of the Oath Spire mountain to their west, bypassing Gothershall. Its southern arm was advancing on Moonwell Village and the forest around it.

I wonder what would have happened to the bloodfiends in Moonwell if they’d been turned into the Shadow’s puppets.

Although the forlorn army was defeated and there were no forlorn knights beyond the castle, there were still plenty of animal melodies and all of Silt Lake’s fish to consider. Not to mention, anything that had already died would reanimate when the Shadow’s grasp reached it. Given that nothing would stay permanently dead while inside its territory, every reanimated corpse was a persistent threat and soon enough corpses would rise to turn the tide against the living. Without the army and roaming knights, it was a much slower process, but it was inevitable so long as the Shadow remained undefeated.

They came within range of the Forlorn Castle’s artillery, but because of how fast they were moving, none of the shadowy ballista bolts could reach them. Soon they passed over the outer walls of the castle town, penetrating the heart of the Shadow’s domain. Groups of soldiers crowded around various elites, and Adam only slowed down when he spotted two banner carrier groups not too far from each other, inside part of the town that might once had housed craftsmen.

“We’re taking out those two elites, and then taking off again for the castle itself,” he told the others.

“Why?” Natalia asked.

“Because they drop a secret I want,” Adam replied.

He swooped down and all but threw Chien at the first carrier, while Natalia cut apart all of the soldiers. Inside the Shadow’s territory, even the soldiers would come back if not blessed with Chien’s unique power or burnt to ash with a true flame.

Adam’s attempts to harvest the corpses of the soldiers were not impossible, but he had to expend so much mana for each one that it defeated the point. Attempting to harvest elites would clearly not be doable for him, since the Shadow’s grasp on them were far stronger compared to its grip on the lowly soldiers, and he would need a lot more mana as a result.

I can’t waste too much of my raiment’s material, because I won’t be able to easily refill it from here on, Adam realised. He had feared this to be the case, but had held out hope that he wasn’t being hard-countered by the Shadow.

Alas.

Once Chien had crushed the bodies of the two different banner carriers with his war hammer, they received the announcements for their defeat, as well as a large weapon left behind next to the corpse of the second one.

[Forlorn Elite defeated.]

[Forlorn Elite defeated.]

< < Secret Weapon Obtained > >

< Tainted Banner (Uncommon) — The banner of a Forlorn Banner Carrier >

It was a long and rusted spear with a faded-blue banner hanging from it, and he guessed it was supposed to be a support weapon to bolster those around the wielder.

Since no one could use the weapon, Adam added it to his collection back on Interim Island and then grabbed the hearts from the two elites.

He flew them towards the castle beyond the town that ringed around it, but was forced to return to the ground near a long set of stairs leading up to the castle entrance, when the Forlorn Shadow physically manifested above the stone edifice and attempted to swat them out of the air.

Adam readied a bright flame in his glove hand as he looked towards the large wooden doors leading into the castle. He could sense a powerful melody approaching.

“It seems we have lost the ability to chose when and whom to fight,” Adam remarked as the doors flung open, spilling out archers and swordsmen, alongside a towering forlorn knight. The knight appeared to be a woman, based on the shape of her rusted breastplate, and the way a blue skirt hung from the plate armour. In her right gauntlet she held a pendant that was a closed eye on a chain. It glowed with a malevolent dark energy, visible to the naked eye. In her left gauntlet was a flanged mace with a very long handle. This too glowed with dark power. But most intimidating of all was her helmet. It was like a mask with a tall forehead, and it featured a single closed eye engraved on the front, but no actual holes for the knight’s eyes or mouth.

< < Optional Stage Objective > >

< Defeat the Forlorn Judge >