17 Castle Morne: Part One

Melina POV:

From the way he looked at me, I immediately knew that he knew that the golden seed was very important, however he didn't know how to make use of it. Therefore, I took out the empty flask bottle, I used on Max when we first met.

Well that's not entirely true. I did meet him, though he was unconscious at the time, so it probably wouldn't count as a proper meeting.

"Please give me the seed and I will show you how to make a Crimson or a cerulean Tear flask"

Once I got the seed I proceeded to explain.

"As you might already know, the Crimson Tear flasks are red and heal your body and contrary the Cerulean Tears are blue and are used to replenish your mana. Unfortunately though which one you get is completely dependent on luck. Now, please hold the empty flask."

I gave the flask to Max and proceeded to slowly and carefully inject some mana into the seed, with the goal to crack it open. After a while the seed began to open up and a blue liquid revealed itself and started flowing out.

"Quick! Hold the empty flask under the seed", I instructed Max.

The liquid had no smell and it it didn't take too long for the flask to be filled.

General POV:

Max could be seen inspecting the flask in his hands and meanwhile Melina continued explaining.

"It looks like you got a cerulean tear from the seed, furthermore you can use the sacred tear, you found, in order to improve its effects, however I wouldn't recommend using the sacred tear now, but instead wait until you get the Crimson Tear liquid from the golden seed. Its up to you, but remember that you can only use one sacred tear per flask."

Max nodded, he already expected that there would be a limited number a flasks he can get and that here is no way to refill them without obtaining another golden seed. Furthermore, he is quite happy that he got a cerulean tear flask, because for him at the moment its way more useful then the crimson tear flask. Besides, he wants to avoid getting hit at all cost, so technically speaking Max doesn't need a crimson tear flask and in the worst case scenario he can just use the Physick flask and put in the Crimson Crystal Tear, which recovers 50% of his health. To sum it up in a few words, since Max primarily wants to fight from the distance, a cerulean tear flask is way better.

As he was thinking about it, he took the physics flask out and stated to fill it with crimson crystal tear until the flask was half full. Then he debated whether he should mix it with a different tear, but after contemplating for a while, he decided that he doesn't need a stamina boost neither does he want to improve his charged attacks, so he left the flask half full.

Max than left the room and looked at all he corpses of the dead soldiers on the ground. He knelt on one knee and searched the bodies in hope of finding some runes on them, but unfortunately he didn't. However, there were already traces that somebody already searched the body's. Afterwards he walked towards the lift and then triggered the mechanism.

Soon he was at the top and what he immediately noticed was the terrible smell. He felt like he was about to throw up. However, he didn't have much time to be irritated about the smell as he looked with wide eyes at the scene in front of him. A mountain of corpses was in front of him, many were still burning and on the top of the "corpsehill" was a huge fire. One bigger missbegotten was beside the huge fire roaring. Meanwhile the other smaller missbegottens were also standing on top of the burnt corpses swinging their weapons in the air, celebrating.

As they were completely immersed in their celebration, they didn't notice that the elevator had been riding down and up and bringing their doom right to their footsteps.

During his time in the Lands Between, Max already grew accustomed to seeing death and dead bodies every day he wasn't at the Roundtable Hold , however the slaughter that happened here, at Castle Morne, shook his soul.

From the outside, a pokerface could be seen on his face, however in that moment, his hearth grew even colder.

Max took a deep breath and continued to observe the missbegottens for a while onger. After some time, the terrible smell didnt bug him anymore and he started the first phase of his plan.

"Alright, time to start my plan to kill everebody 'cough' 'cough' free Castle Morne."

The opening is actually very simple, he plans to use his wolves and himself as bait, in order to group up a many Missbegottens as possible and then slaughter them with the Flame of Frenzy incantation.

He did as he planned and summoned the wolves and took a few steps forwards revealing himself infront of all the Missbegottens and he tried his best to get their attention.

"Hello everyone! May I have your attention!"

The Missbegottens stopped their actions and looked curiously into his direction. Contrary to his expectation they didnt immidialty charge at him, but instead they had a small standoff. Max looked each of them in the eye and then enchanted his sword using the Order's Blade incantation. Soon, 2 of the smaller Missbegottens walked towards him.

Once they were close, they wolves revelaed themselves and charged at them. This surprised the „servants" and Max used this moment of surprise to quickly close the distance and performed a heavy jump attack while infusing his arms with mana. Each Missbegotten took two mana infused hits to be killed and with the wolves distracting the other missbegotten, Max made quick work of them, in addition the holy enchantement burnt their flesh.

Furthermore, he felt they need that, in order to make the other missbegottens chase him, he needed to make them truly hate him. Therefore, he cut open one of the bodys and took out its heart, that just stopped beating and hold it into the air.

"Very well, "slaves". Let me reintroduce myself. I am here to kill you filthy beast!"

A grin appeared on his face, additionally provoking them.

Finally, the biggest of the missbegotten released a terrifieng scream in rage. His scream acted like a signal for the other „servants" who were being blinded by rage. They too screamed in rage and charged at Max.

In face of their rage, the grin on his face quickly disapeared. Following the plan he retreated to the lift and ordered the wolves to stall the missbegottens for as long as possible. Very soon, almost all the slaves were near the gate and as the wolves were being overrun, Max knew, that he couldnt wait any longer, so he calmed down and carefully started casting the incantation.

Then, just when the missbegottens were grouped up by the wolves, Max finished casting the incantation and multiple rounds of powerful yellow flames shot at high speed from his eyes. The flames of chaos covered a wide area in front of him, and although many shots missed their targets as they hit a wall, however that it didnt really matter, because the flames that did managed to hit their target spelled the end for them, as the yellow flame didnt just stop burning after a while, but instead continued devauring its target. Furthermore, a second hit accelerated the process and the poor missbegottens dropped their weapons as they fell to their knees with their hands on their heads, while their eyeballs were set ablaze by the frenzied flame.

Once the eyes were reduced to ashes, and the eyesockets were empty, the by madness affected bodys fell lifelessly to the ground. Max stopped casting and took a look around. The missbegottens nearest to him were better off as they got killed quickly, unlike the ones behind. He saw that almost all the smaller ones were either dead or near it, only the bigger one could still fight. Therefore, Max just threw multiple fireballs at him and then put him out of his misery with the sword.

'Haha, I knew it. No wonder you can't proc madness onto enemies in the game. It's way to overpowered. Not only does it do a lot of damage but on top of that the effected enemies stay in the same position for a while.'

However this came with a price. Now, that Max had fully used the incantation for a longer period of time, he could feel that a very small amount of madness mana remain in his body, and whatever Max tried, he wasn't able to remove it.

Is this like my madness status bar?

I need to confirm it.

Max then looked at Melina.

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Author's Note:

Good evening/day/morning,

I would like to firstly apologize for not updating for quite a while, it's just that I was really busy the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately this week isn't any better but I will try to write a few chapters.

As for the future update schedule, after Wednesday in a week, I will write at least 4+ chapters a week and if I have time even more.

Thank you for your understanding ;)

P.S.

Elden Ring won game of the Year 🥳🥳🥳 and what do you guys think of the coliseum update?

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