Chapter 118: Ruins of Kolz Pt.3
Before the party stood the barren courtyard of the ruined castle of Kolz. While the ground was at one point made of paved brick paths, they’d been overtaken by patches of grass, weeds and moss. Vines, bushes and other forms of vegetation had found its way into the corners and were dangling down the walls of the light blue stone blocks. Time and the elements had done much to wear down the structural integrity of the walls and the castle as well.
There was evidence that towers once stood along the wall, two flanking the gate that Aegis’ party stood in front of, but the towers were ruined and mere shadows of what they potentially once were. They were broken off at the tops and now barely taller than the walls themselves.
As the party stepped through the gate and entered the courtyard, Aegis turned back and could see the interior of the tower to the left of the gate - the inner wall of it had collapsed as had most of the interior floors. Inside were broken, decrepit pieces of sun bleached furniture scattered about. Wherever the sun didn’t reach, cobwebs were strewn about mixed in with the wild plants that had taken over. Everything about the ruins screamed out that it’d been abandoned and sitting here untouched for a very, very long time. Aegis’ remembered reading in the game manual that the Shattering had supposedly occurred 250 years prior to the games launch, meaning these ruins were likely designed to be that old.
“I reckon we’re the first players to step foot in these ruins, ever.” Darkshot said as he scanned the courtyard for anything interesting.
“I reckon? What are you, from Texas now?” Aegis replied with a raised eyebrow.
“What’s wrong with saying reckon?” Darkshot grumbled back.
“I reckon nothings wrong with it.” Pyri replied with a grin.
“How do you suppose the ruins ended up here on top of this tree?” Rakkan asked curiously.
“No idea.” Aegis replied.
“If we’re the first ones here, that means that any traps inside will not be triggered.” Lina said.
“Okay, let’s stick together and take it slow. We know about three types of enemies in this dungeon so far, and they’re all annoying. This isn’t the sort of place you go to gain experience, so let’s find the book, do a quick search for treasures and runes, then get out of here.” Aegis said to the group and everyone nodded. From there, Aegis stepped forward through the courtyard up to a pair of double doors that lead into the castle itself. The castle was huge, made up of multiple floors and towers stacked on top of one another, though many of the walls were cracked and broken apart making the interior of some rooms visible from the outside.
Aegis stepped through the front door of the castle first, with Lina and Rakkan behind him on either side, then Pyri and Darkshot further back. The doors themselves had broken off the hinges and laid flat on the stone brick floor overtop of a moth-eaten rug that led further into the main hall of the building. Aegis walked across the doors as the dried and deteriorating wooden planks cracked and crunched under his weight.
Inside the main hall was a broken copper chandelier that had fallen from the roof and landed on the center of the room in front of him in several pieces. There were multiple pillars holding up the ceiling, though some of them had broken and collapsed, laying on their side in several pieces scattered about.
There were windows allowing some light inside, high up on the walls of the wide open hall, but most of the light was coming in through a large crack in the ceiling, and cobwebs were strewn about much more densely here. A damp musty smell filled their nostrils, and the sound of the wind passing through the ruined castle whistled and howled around them as the sounds of birds chirping outside became less noticeable.
Their footsteps echoed off of the interior walls as they all stepped inside and looked around curiously, but there wasn’t much of interest in this main hall save for a suit of old rusted copper armor that had collapsed and was scattered about on one side of the room.
Before them were three doors on the ground level. One door leading left, one right, and one straight ahead, and then a pair of staircases on either side of the door straight ahead of them that curved upwards until they converged in the middle above the door on a second floor walkway that overlooked the lower floor. The walkway itself had three separate doorways leading further upstairs, but none of the 6 visible doorways had any actual doors on them. They were all open, as if beckoning adventurers forward to explore their long lost secrets.
“Okay. Which way first?” Aegis said as he looked at the six paths curiously. The group stepped further into the hall to get a better view of what was beyond each, but it was too dark to make out very much detail as they tried to look further in. Pyri snapped her fingers and created a cinderbolt, then motioned it forward through the center door that sat between the two staircases, illuminating the central room to reveal what looked to be a gigantic dining hall. There were rows and rows of tables and chairs, all in very poor condition, and on the far end of the room was an elevated platform with a table and stone chairs facing the rest of the room. Aegis imagined that must’ve been where the nobles or royalty sat.
“I guess if we build a castle in Rene it's going to need its own dining hall like that too huh?” Aegis said as he and the others stepped forward and looked through the doorway more closely while Pyri moved her cinderbolt around and flattened it to grant better lighting.
“Of course, it’s where you host all the festivities and stuff.” Darkshot said in agreement.
“Look.” Rakkan pointed at the largest chair at the far end of the room, where in it sat a skeleton of a humanoid creature, cobwebs strewn about it.
“Suspicious…” Pyri whispered as they all eyed the skeleton.
“Why’d he just sit in his chair like that and die, why are there no other skeletons?” Aegis asked rhetorically.
“Should we check it out?” Rakkan asked with a glimmer of excitement in his eyes that Aegis’ couldn’t say no to.
“I guess.” Aegis shrugged.
“Wait.” Lina stopped them from stepping forward through the door and into the dining hall. She then knelt down and gently ran her fingers across a thin wire that was strung taut across the doorway. “Traps.” She said as everyone saw it now, despite not noticing it before. “Clear the doorway.” She said as she motioned them away. Then she herself stood off to the side of the door, pulled out a dagger, and cut the wire. Immediately after she had, a set of copper spikes swung down into the doorway pointed out towards them, from above the inside of the door, making a loud metallic clanking sound as it did.
They all went quiet for a moment, waiting for the noise to settle - half expecting something else to happen, or a monster to react to the sound, but it remained silent.
“That doesn’t look that deadly, I mean, how much damage can a copper trap really do?” Darkshot said as he looked at it carefully.
“Engineers get bonuses to trap crafting, and the damage on some of them get ridiculously high. You should never underestimate traps, especially because of this…” Lina said as she tapped the copper spikes end's with her dagger, and there was a strange black goo on the ends of them.
“What is that?” Pyri asked curiously as everyone got closer to inspect it.
“It’s a type of poison. If a Chemist class player makes it, they can be very deadly too.” Lina explained.
“There’s Chemist classes?” Aegis asked curiously as he stepped forward and pulled an empty bottle out of his inventory. “I want to see if I can figure out how to make some poisons myself.” he excitedly scraped some of the goo off into his bottle.
“There’s a class for almost everything in this game, I think.” Rakkan shrugged. Once Aegis had finished he put the bottle with the goo back into his inventory.
“Okay, stay quiet and walk slowly, and keep an eye out for traps. Wires, pressure plates and stuff, right?” Aegis asked Lina, and she nodded back. With that, he ducked underneath the copper trap and walked through the doorway, entering the dining hall, and the others followed behind him.
“Don’t forget our inventories are gonna be stuffed already with all that leather, so only grab stuff that looks like it's worth a lot.” Aegis said as he spotted several pieces of old silverware and goblets scattered about on the broken dining tables.
“What about this?” Darkshot said as he pointed at an old goblet.
“That looks like junk to me.” Rakkan replied. The group fanned out through the room, traveling separately through the rows of tables to try and find anything valuable, but in the end, it all looked worthless.
“I guess you can’t expect much treasure in the dining hall. Unless it’s up there.” Aegis said as he motioned to the elevated platform with the table and chairs facing the rest of the room, where the skeleton sat. The group nervously looked at each other and grouped together, staring up at the skeleton.
“You reckon he’s got some treasure on him?” Darkshot asked.
“Reckon.” Aegis mumbled to himself while shaking his head. “I reckon, he might have the text we’re looking for.” Aegis replied.
“Who wants to go up there and check?” Pyri asked, looking at the others, and everyone quietly waited for someone else to volunteer.
“I guess I’ll check.” Rakkan eventually shrugged, then cautiously stepped up onto the elevated platform and stood across the table at eye level with the skeleton. He was clothed in what looked to have been fine clothing, but had decayed a great deal and was covered in holes now, revealing the ribcage of the skeleton underneath.
More interesting to Rakkan, though, was an old musty tome that the skeleton had resting on its lap, and a chain around its neck with an old iron key hanging off the end of it.
“He’s got a book, and a key.” Rakkan whispered to the group as they watched him with baited breath. “Should I take it?” He asked.
“Yeah, of course.” Darkshot replied in a whisper.
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“Carefully! Look for traps!” Lina added, also whispering.
“Why are you guys whispering? It’s not like you’re going to wake him up.” Pyri whispered as well, but got no response as they all held their breath and watched Rakkan carefully lift the necklace up over the skeleton’s skull.
“There’s the key…” Rakkan whispered, holding it behind himself so that Aegis could take it from him. He then carefully leaned over the table and gently lifted the hands of the skeleton up off of the tome, and moved it to the side. As he did, the arm fell off the rest of the body and collapsed onto the floor beside the chair, causing Darkshot to let out a loud squeal and Lina a loud squeak. Truthfully, Aegis couldn’t tell which sound came from who. Rakkan froze in place and waited to see if anything else would happen, due to the noise, but nothing did, so finally reached down and picked up the book.
“Got it, no problems.” Rakkan whispered, and everyone let out sighs of relief as he hopped back down to join them off the elevated platform.
“So, a key and a book. Can you read it? Maybe it says what the key is for.” Aegis asked as Rakkan opened the book and carefully looked over the dried out, hardened pages. He had to be very gentle not to damage them, but luckily they were still readable.
“Yeah.” Rakkan’s face lit up with joy as he looked at Aegis with a gigantic childlike smile. “I can read it, because of the Rune Knight skills.” He said excitedly.
“Nice, what’s it say?” Aegis asked as the others huddled around to look at the pages with Rakkan, despite none of them being able to read it.
“Hmm…” He spent a few minutes scanning over the pages. “Whoa I’m getting a lot of experience in my Ancient Languages skill for reading this… okay…” He mumbled as he went over a few more pages. “It’s a journal, this guy was the King of Kolz. It seems like when the world shattered, they went up with Kalmoore, but the land they were on was unstable, so everyone left for Kordas. But this guy didn’t want to leave his castle so he stayed with it, and eventually the castle collapsed and fell, but landed in an ancient Fyonial Tree.” Rakkan said as he turned a few more pages.
“He thought he was lucky, because even though the Fyonial Tree’s roots were shrouded in darkness, a river flowing off of the island of Kalmoore continued to sustain the tree's growth. He’d hoped that one day the tree would grow big enough to carry his castle back up into the sunlight.”
“He was right about that, but I guess he didn’t live long enough to see it happen.” Aegis commented as he looked at the skeleton with sympathy.
“He also says that without his custodians to keep the cleaning oozes in check, they’ve been running rampant and taken over most of the castle. He tried to control their population by awakening the castle’s guardians, the gargoyles, but they wouldn’t listen to him and they ran rampant as well. He mentions that the custodians used to have a secret way to control the cleaning oozes, though he couldn’t get to it, and ended up confining himself in the dining hall… then… it looks like he ran out of food.” Rakkan finished as he closed the book.
“That key unlocks whatever it was that was used to control the oozes.” Rakkan pointed at the key that was now in Aegis’ hands.
“Cleaning oozes? They used those things to clean?” Darkshot said in disbelief.
“It makes sense, I guess. Living acid puddles would be a good, sanitary way to disinfect and clean a hallway.” Aegis shrugged. “Any idea where to use that key?” Aegis asked Rakkan.
“Dungeons.” Rakkan pointed downward.
“Of course.” Darkshot sighed.
“Let’s find the stairs to the basement, then.” Aegis replied as he started leading the group back out from whence they came.
“It’s so much easier to explore a dungeon when someone can read the ancient language.” Lina smiled at Rakkan.
“Yeah, good thing you took Rune Knight instead of Battlemaster, or we’d probably get stuck here forever.” Darkshot agreed as they all walked ahead of Rakkan who followed behind them with a big proud smile on his face. “Anything about an ancient book, or treasure?” Darkshot added with a quick glance back at Rakkan.
“Nope.” Rakkan shrugged.
“Guess we’ll have to find that stuff ourselves.” Aegis concluded. A few moments later the party found themselves back in the main entry hall, with five other doors to choose from. “The three doors upstairs probably don’t lead to the dungeon. So, we’ve got door number one, or door number two.” Aegis said as he stepped back and looked down each doorway whilst Pyri pulled her cinderbolt out of the dining hall and motioned it down one of the doors, illuminating the hallway ahead with a dark red glow.
“Ah, I see it. It’s this way.” Lina said as she had moved close to the door to get a better view down the hallway.
“That was easy.” Pyri replied. Lina cautiously led the way through the door into the hallway. The hall continued ahead a good distance, and light could be seen making its way into the hall through cracks in the wall from outside, but a staircase leading downward was on their immediate left upon entering the hall, giving them no reason to continue further down the hallway to explore. The group of five moved to the top of the staircase and looked down it, while Pyri waved her cinderbolt downward to light up the dark passageway.
A cold breeze could be felt blowing up at them from down the stairs, but no sound could be heard. It looked dark and ominous, but at the same time inviting, as if screaming out at them to explore it, and Aegis took the first steps down the stairs with his shield held in front. Without needing to be told, everyone went as quiet as possible, walking with light steps as they descended down the stairs into the Kolz Castle dungeons.
18 steps later, Aegis touched the bottom and found himself standing in a chilly, damp and musty hall, but there was not a spec of dust or patch of moss to be seen anywhere - the walls, roof, and floor were spotless. The hall split to the left and the right. Aegis knew it’d be faster to split up and explore, but he also knew the enemies in this dungeon were too much of a pain to risk fighting them while in smaller groups.
“Let’s start with this way.” Aegis said as he picked left, and began walking forward. Pyri moved the cinderbolt ahead of him and they walked on a few meters with nothing but the sound of their feet tapping on the stone floor.
“Isn’t this a bit too easy? I mean, it’s a dungeon, but there’s hardly any monsters.” Darkshot whispered after they had walked a bit, but the moment he had, the sound of bubbling and dripping began to echo off the walls, as a viscous gooey liquid began to seep down from the ceiling in front of them. A few seconds later, a similar sound could be heard behind them, and within seconds, two Kolz Oozes began to form puddles on the floor of the dungeon hallway, both in front of them and behind them.
“Seriously?” Aegis glared at Darkshot, as if he was the reason they had appeared. “Bless, Aura of Beauty.” Aegis said, quickly buffing everyone and activating his glowing white aura, which emitted enough light on its own that Pyri could get rid of her cinderbolt. “It’s going to be hard to dodge them, kill the one behind us first before we run out of room between them.” Aegis said, and everyone nodded enthusiastically.
“Multicast, icelance.” Pyri said, shooting an icicle forward and backward to freeze over both of them at the same time. Once she had, everyone went all out with their attacks on the ooze behind them, focusing their strikes on the frozen part of it. Aegis couldn’t get close enough to strike it with Lina and Rakkan taking point, so instead he focused on keeping an eye on both of the oozes. They were close enough to use their melee ooze punches, but Aegis knew better than to try and block that with his actual shield. He relied instead on using guard when he needed to in order to protect his allies. With guard, he couldn’t use brace, so he was talking much more damage, but he didn’t want to risk the durability of the shield dropping any lower as it was already well below half.
Level up!: Acid Resistance has reached Level 2!
Level up!: Acid Resistance has reached Level 3!
Level up!: Acid Resistance has reached Level 4!
Level up!: Acid Resistance has reached Level 5!
Level up!: Heal has reached Level 54!
Aegis took a lot of acid hits throughout the fight using his guard, and as result had to repeatedly cast heal on himself to keep his health up. The oozes acid attacks hit extremely hard, on average for 2500 acid damage. Luckily, all the points in his spirit were paying off and his mana recovery was keeping up with his expenditures on his heal spell rather well. With his skills trained up from fighting the lynxes, taking hits from two of these oozes was manageable, and after about a minute of fighting, his party was able to kill the first one, giving them room to back up from the second that had appeared in front. After that, it was another minute of teamwork before the second went down.
“Those things aren’t so bad once you know how to handle them.” Pyri commented.
“Yeah, and there isn’t a gargoyle staring you down.” Rakkan added as Aegis walked forward a few steps to look around, utilizing the light from his aura to see clearly. Up ahead was a doorway off the side of the hall that he peered through to see a large room filled with broken glass cages, resembling aquariums, lining the walls on both the left and right. On the far end of the room was a table, a broken chair, and a shelf filled with old books, as well as a door made of iron that had signs of rusting on the corners.
“This looks like where they kept the oozes.” Aegis said curiously as he stepped inside and looked around. The others took notice and followed him in, Lina rushing to his side.
“Be careful, traps.” She said as he cautiously scanned the floor and the walls around them.
“It’s spotless down here. Any traps were probably triggered or destroyed by those oozes puddling their way around.” Aegis replied as he approached one of the glass cages. “So, the NPCs that lived here managed to tame those ooze monsters, used them as pets to clean the castle, then kept them in glass cages? Pretty creative.” Aegis said, impressed as he looked at the broken shards of glass from one of the nearby cages.
“Guess the glass broke when the keep fell down from Kalmoore onto the top of the tree.” Pyri commented as she looked at the cage opposite Aegis. Rakkan made his way to the back where the table and books were and started checking them, while Darkshot watched Lina glance at the three of them anxiously, terrified someone might recklessly trigger some sort of trap.
“Relax, my tracking has leveled up a bit since we got in here, I’m starting to spot signs of those oozes being nearby. There aren’t any here.” Darkshot tried to reassure Lina a bit.
“They’re probably afraid of this room, since it's where they were caged up.” Aegis replied as Rakkan opened a book and started reading it, then lost interest and moved onto the next.
“Patrol schedules… They kept a log of who was escorting the oozes, what days to do it, and what time. So the old Kolz guards would escort them through the hallways late at night to act as garbage collectors and the acid would just dissolve the junk.” Rakkan said as he went through a few more books.
“Here, this book is about training new recruits, and training new oozes.” Rakkan flipped through the pages quickly as everyone stopped what they were doing and approached him. They patiently waited in silence until he reached the end, and as he did he put the book down and turned towards the iron door.
“I think the key is for that door… whatever is in there is how they got the oozes to listen to them.” Rakkan said as he motioned to it. Aegis gave a nod and took the key they’d taken from the skeleton's neck and used it on the door. It fit, and made a loud clicking sound. Everyone waited excitedly as Aegis slowly creaked open the iron door to reveal a small room the size of a closet with a weapon rack on the back wall of it. There were hilts of several swords hanging from the rack, but the blades of most had rusted away.
“Those aren’t really going to help us, they're just old weapons. They controlled them with swords?” Darkshot asked as he saw the ruined blades.
“No, not quite. We only found all of this because Rakkan could read the ancient languages,” Aegis stepped forward and picked up one of the hilts. “To someone who can’t read runes, these swords look like junk. But I imagine to a class that can read them, it’s worth something.” Aegis grinned as he tilted the bottom of the sword's handle towards Rakkan so that he could see a rune etched onto it of a half triangle engraved over a square with a cut through the middle, and a small circle with three dots in the center.
“That’s… That’s a rune! A new rune!” Rakkan said excitedly as he looked at it carefully.
“It’s on the bottom of the handles of all of these rusted old swords, so it must be how these swords were used to tame the oozes, right?” Aegis said as he looked at the other old sword handles. “I wonder if I can somehow craft weapons with these runes.” Aegis pondered.
“I think that only works if you are an enchanter with arcane magic.” Lina replied.
“Oh, bummer.” Aegis shrugged, all while Rakkan’s grin grew wider and wider.
“Guys! New rune unlocked.” He said proudly as he held his longsword out in front of himself. “Rune: Frostbrand.” He shouted, and the same rune that had been on the rusted swords appeared at the base of Rakkan’s sword’s blade. As it did, a wave of frost shimmered over the metal and a burst of cold air began to emanate from it.
“Nice, now we’re really going to kick those ooze’s asses.” Darkshot said as he saw the blade.
“That’s really useful.” Lina smiled encouragingly at Rakkan.
“Yeah, and we’re gonna need it.” Rakkan nodded with enthusiasm. “Cause there’s one more thing that was in that book back there.” He said while motioning to the book he’d set down on the table. “They were breeding the oozes using a King Ooze. And they kept it caged in the highest tower of the castle, to guard the King’s vault.” Rakkan said.
“You think the ancient shiva text is in the king's vault?” Aegis asked the group.
“Probably.” Pyri replied.
“Yeah, and a bunch of other treasure too, I bet.” Darkshot smiled.
“Then.” Aegis walked forward out of the room, leading the group onward. “Guess we gotta go kill a King Ooze.” He finished, and they all eagerly followed behind him.