18 Castle Morne: Part Two

Melina and Max met each other eyes and then Max spoke:

"Melina, you seem to know a lot about the frenzied flame, could you perhaps offer me your guidance and answer my question?"

Melina nodded.

"Thank you. So, here is what's bugging me. There is some frenzied mana in me left, and I can't seem to get rid of it… why is that?"

"Well, let me firstly give thee a closer insight in casting. Whenever you try to cast an incantation, a special type of mana will be produced in your body. Inevitably, during this process, this type of mana will fuse with your bloodstream, in order to arrive to the wanted destination. Like your eyes or your hand. However, it is impossible to remove all the special mana from your bloodstream, some small part will stay. Do you understand?"

Max nodded and signaled Melina to continue.

"Alright, then let's talk briefly over the types of mana. The first one, is your personal mana, let's call it original mana, which your heart produces, you use it, when you infuse your legs, in order to dodge or your arms when you want to increase the strength of your attack.

Then the second type. The special type of mana you use to cast incantations, and is not originally yours, but instead borrowed. Here we can also distinguish between two versions. A parasitic type and a symbiotic type. Here, basically the main difference is that parasitic type mana with harm you when you use it and continuously damage you and grow inside you once it's in your body, and contrary symbiotic type mana won't harm you whatever you do. For example, the mana you used to cast Orders blade isn't harmful, because this type is very similar to the one used in healing incantations.

Furthermore, the fire incantations, you currently know, which originate from the fire monks, are in a gray zone, because if you carelessly use them, they can bring you to death's door. Finally, as you might expect, the madness type mana or the mana from a gruesome god, is harmful. This mana is actively devouring, and it's impossible to remove it with normal means, because when it comes it contact with other types of mana it will try to greedily absorb it. To put it in a few words, clarifying your bloodstream of the parasitic mana is unfeasible."

"But what about clarifying Boluses? Shouldn't they be able to clean out my bloodstream?"

Once more, Melina was surprised that Mac knew about them: "Yes, they would solve the problem, however the recipe for them is long-lost. Nobody knows how to make them."

With this, Melina confirmed his theory, therefore he added visiting the frenzied flame village in Liurnia as a future goal. However, it will take quite some time until he can get his hands on such a boli, so until that, he cannot spam this powerful incantation, but instead has to carefully select the situation when to cast it.

As Max made up his mind, the two proceeded to advance further into the castle. Of course, Max didn't forget to collect all the runes from the missbegottens.

Walking over the thousands of burnt bodies, didn't affect him anymore as he continued marching with a cold face. Soon, he saw a Mad Pumpkin Head, sitting motionlessly. Max sneaked up to him and pierced his back with the bloodhounds' fang and moved the sword inside him, making a mess of his body. Once he took it out, the pumpkin still wasn't dead, however he didn't have any chance to retaliate because Max finished him with a few more strikes on his back.

'Well, that went well. His kind can become tricky if you fight him head on.', thought Max.

Before he continued to the latter, he quickly made his way up the corpse hill and entered the room where a certain chest was. Once Max opened it, he was greeted by the Claymore. An awesome Greatsword.

Nearby, he could hear some fighting, but he chose to ignore it, since he didn't care and therefore Max just walked back to where he killed the pumpkin. There, he was attacked by a lone missbegotten. Max already anticipated this surprise attack, so he had no issues to quickstep in order to avoid it and counter with an overhead attack of his own. The poor missbegotten didn't even stand a chance.

Max looked down at the dead "servant" and then spoke to Melina.

"I will need your help for the next part. There will be two flying enemies, and I want you to take them down from the air, so I can strike them with my sword. Just hitting them once will be enough."

Melina nodded and then they climbed up the ladder. There, they were greeted by a running missbegotten. He wasn't a problem for the two of them, as the fight didn't even last a few seconds. Then, Max rushed towards the bridge, with Melina right behind him. Soon, they engaged in a fight with two flying "servants" who shot arrows at them. Max gave his best to avoid them, however he wasn't fast enough as a few arrows hit him. He gritted his teeth and endured the pain, while he continued running. In the meantime, Melina carefully closed the distance and then shot exactly two golden waves from her dagger. They separately hit the two missbegottens. Once they fell, Max managed to swiftly behead them.

With them dead, they were one step closer to meeting Irina's father, Edward. Max crossed the bridge and observed the struggling soldiers fighting against the missbegottens. They are the last remaining fighting force against them in this castle. However, they are destined to lose. As they were outnumbered.

As Max saw this, he decided to use the soldiers as a distraction, so he could tackle the missbegottens one by one. Therefore, Max used the latter to drop down and engaged in the battles. The only surviving soldiers were the ones with Greatshields, and they were being pressed against the wall. Max charged at the closest Missbegottens and killed him quickly and then ran at the next one.

After eliminating a few more, the other ones got aware of his presence and some of them changed their targets. There was one who started shooting arrows at Max, successfully hitting him many times, with the result that Max cried out in pain, as many arrows were sticking out. Melina came to his aid, shooting three waves of light from her dagger. This created a moment for Max to rip out the arrows, which were hindering his movement. He cried out in pain, and began to kill the remaining missbegottens like a madman.

When the last remaining soldier, saw Max fighting, it reignited a spark of hope in him, and he also started fighting with more fighting spirit than before. So, the nameless soldier even managed to kill one of the attackers.

However, as he had been fighting for the last days nonstop, without rest, and barely eating, the fatigue then overwhelmed him. He still wanted to fight, but his body began to malfunction and refused to move, as he fell on his knees. He could only watch as a blade split his skull in half.

However, his actions weren't useless, as with his last stand, he gave Max enough time to take care of the remaining missbegottens, and even killed one. If he hadn't done that, there would have been a high chance that Max would have been overwhelmed by their numbers.

After the battle, Max continued to stare at his surroundings for a few minutes.

A few minutes later...

Max took a deep breath as he finally managed to calm down. He then inspected his body, it was fully covered in blood, just like his surroundings. The injuries he suffered weren't lethal, however they are without a doubt quite painful. However, he obviously didn't want to waste his physic on such injuries. So, he remembered what Melina told him earlier today. When she talked about the similarity between the mana used in healing incantations and the Golden Order's incantation.

So, he started performing the incantation, and he slowly channeled the holy mana towards his wounds. As expected, his wounds started healing, but once they did that, he noticed an exponential increase in his mana consume. Luckily, the wounds weren't too deep and after healing most of his injuries, he still had half of his mana left.

Afterward, he went towards the location where the commander of this castle could be found. Before that, he collected all the runes he got from this battle. In total, he got around 4 thousand runes today.

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Author Note:

Merry Christmas!🎄🎁

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