The doors opened slowly and without noise at first, but as soon as the party managed to get a better picture of what laid beyond, they started to creak loudly. Moments later, movement could be heard, leading to Mira and Brom ripping the doors open as planned.
Seven undead lykans started to sprint towards Sean and Corvo, though a quick < Fireball > from the young pyromancer made them stop in their tracks, as it exploded in the face of the first zombie, causing the three zombies at the front to be flung backwards into the rest of the horde, which stumbled to the floor and caught on fire.
The necrotic energy of undead beings acted as fuel for fire-elemental magic, thus causing heavy damage to the zombies who had taken the brunt of the attack, who were now writhing on the floor in agony as their mouths contorted into silent screams, as their vocal cords had long been destroyed. However, those who had been in the back quickly managed to get back on their feet and tried to get their claws on their attackers, only to be intercepted by Brom and Mira, who had used Corvo's distraction to draw their weapons and now swiftly dealt with the remaining undead.
Their victory was only short-lived, as Eleonora sprinted towards them.
“The noise has alerted more zombies! We have to get inside quickly!”
The party spent no time mulling over her words and ran for the door of the manor, which they quickly closed behind them. They could hear several zombies ramming the heavy wooden gate of the manor, though as it was reinforced with iron unlike the flimsy wooden doors of the cathedral, and could only be opened outwards, they thought themselves in the clear, at least for the moment.
The five took this moment of safety and inspected their surroundings.
Just as its outside would suggest, the insides of the manor too were decorated quite palatially. The walls and floors were made out of polished white marble, the corners of which were decorated with gold, and illuminated by gems which had been embedded into the walls.
“Lucranium, innit? I'd like ta take a few of them, seeing as they are quite useful, though I would hate ta sit in the dark here.”, Brom commented.
Beneath their feet, a torn, dirty red carpet let towards a staircase of the same polished stone as the rest of the manor, which split into two after reaching the first floor of the building, with one staircase leading to the left, and the other to the right, though as the right side of the manor took heavy damage, the way was completely blocked by debris.
Between them and the staircase was a dropped crystal chandelier which contained the same gemstones as the walls, surrounded by multiple half-eaten corpses, some in armour, others in the attire of servants, as well as the bodies of unmoving zombies, which had likely been killed by the soldiers trying to lead others to safety. It was a truly gruesome display, though despite knowing there is nothing left they could do for the victims, the group felt unease about simply ignoring the bodies and moving on. Sensing this, Brom reached for a pendant in the form of the Cross of Light, and asked them to join in on a prayer for the deceased.
“Your suffering has ended, take your well earned rest. May your souls embark on the Ardent Path and find their way into the next life.”
Feeling slightly better about the situation after having helped send the departed off, Sean asked where they should go next.
“As you can see, the right side of the manor is completely off-limits. Should we stay down here, or climb up the stairs? I don't think the minotaur is inside the manor, seeing as there are no signs of damage if we disregard the obvious collapsed part of it, but that doesn't mean we can't have a look around and see if we can find something useful?”
Seeing as the others agreed with Sean, a vote was held to find out where they wanted to go. Corvo and Eleonora voted for going up the stairs, as it was the most likely place to find valuables and maybe even some rare books, but Mira and Brom wanted to stay on the ground floor.
“Since there were soldiers protecting the manor, I'm pretty sure we would be able to find some kind of armoury here!”, Mira explained, followed by Brom, who nodded.
“Yeah, that or either a small altar or the kitchen!”
As this lead to Sean acting as the tie-breaker, he decided on a compromise.
“Seeing as we will have to leave the manor to find the minotaur, we will have to explore the ground-floor anyway, so let's go upstairs first and see what we can find.”
Thus half of the party climbed the staircase, while the other half begrudgingly followed them. On the second floor, the party found several doors, some of which had been badly damaged, while others had been ripped from their hinges.
Most of the rooms were either devoid of anything useful other than a few lucranium crystals, which Brom all to happily added to his collection, filled with corpses, or contained zombies, which were swiftly dealt with.
“See? I told you we should have stayed downstairs.”, Mira exclaimed smugly as they reached the last door at the end of a long corridor on the right.
However, this room turned out to be exactly what they had been looking for, as it turned out to be some kind of office. Right in front of them was a small table surrounded by 3 sofas, and the left and right wall of the rooms were hidden behind tall bookshelves. The books they once contained had mostly been thrown on the ground, making it look like someone had tried to find something among them. On the wall opposite of the party was a large wooden desk with a large office chair, which had been turned away from the door and towards a window covering almost the entire wall, which offered a view of the large hedge-maze in the garden behind the manor.
Wary of the state of the office and the chair having been turned away from them, Sean used hand signs to tell the others to slowly step back outside.
“What do you guys think? Reeks like a trap, doesn't it?”, he asked his friends, who seemed to be on the same page as him.
“Mira, when we get back inside, can you try to pierce the chair from behind? Even if there was another zombie on it, this should at least keep it from getting a jump on us.”
“Sure.”
As they stepped back into the office, the 5 readied their weapons, and Mira slowly approached the chair. Upon being within reach of the chair, she lunged forward and stabbed her spear right through the middle. Seeing as her action was not followed by movement, she decided to retrieve her weapon and turn the chair around.
To her horror, sitting there on the chair was a male lykan, who, unlike the others, showed no signs of having turned into an undead, or having been killed by one of them, only a bleeding hole where she had stabbed the body through the chair, leading her to believe that she had just murdered a survivor in cold blood. Seeing her shocked expression, Corvo quickly approached her and laid a hand on her shoulder to calm her down.
“Mira, remember what Professor Lambert told us! There are no survivors in this gate! And even if he was one, he would have at least made some kind of noise as soon as the spear pierced him!”
Corvo's reminder was all it took to calm Mira's racing mind.
“You're right. Thanks. Almost lost it there.”
“No problem.”
On closer inspection, Corvo noticed that the throat of the lykan had been cut through by something, and on the floor next to it he could see a large knife.
“I think he might have killed himself. Maybe he could not stomach being eaten by the undead?”, he asked into the room, and Eleonora, who had been looking over the contents of the papers and books on the table, agreed with his assumption.
“Look at the book in front of him! It kind of looks like a diary! Maybe he wrote down his final thoughts before the zombies broke through?”
Sean took the book, but as whatever information it contained was written in an unfamiliar language, he could make neither heads nor tails of it.
“Can any of you read this?”
He showed the pages to the others, but they all shook their heads.
“I know what it says!”, Kassandra Lambert exclaimed, causing the others to jump in surprise, as she had somehow manage to evade their perception ever since they had left the cathedral, causing them to forget that she was even there.
“What, did you already forget that I'm following you?”, she asked them, visibly amused at their reaction.
“Anyway, as finding the hidden backstory of this Rift is not part of the exam, I can tell you the contents of the book as well as some additional intel about the the events which have transpired here, if you want. The book is written in the Language of Nature, the common language of beastkin, by the way, and the important pages would give you some context as to what happened here. Well?”
Seeing as the others nodded, Lambert began to explain the reason as to why this dungeon became known as the Town of Regret.
“About 10 years before the events of this Abyssal Rift took place, a war had been fought between this city and its neighbors due to conflicts pertaining the hunting grounds in the north, as they stretched over both territories. This city managed to win the conflict, but instead of rewarding the soldiers, the city-lord had half of them executed for treason. Among them was the son of a retired sorcerer, who had been absent during the conflict as he had business in the capital. Upon his return, he had to bury his child who, in his mind, had unjustly been killed by the city-lord and those he formerly called his friends. All attempts to confront the city-lord about his actions ended in failure, and even led to the sorcerers arrest. On the same day he was imprisoned, he would escape from the gaol they had thrown him into, and swore to avenge his murdered son.
As the sorcerer was born with a dark-spirit, but only used his magic to create weapons, he spent the next 10 years to learn necromancy and form an army to invade the city, leading to the events described in the note I had read to you before we entered the Rift.
After having reached the manor of the city-lord, the necromancer tried to find the owner, but as he was not able to do so, he ordered his minions to find and kill anyone still alive on the property, which they did as he looked through the city-lord's belongings to find the real reason why his son had to die. The reason was written on the pages of the diary you took from the desk. It described how the city-lord had found a large group of his soldiers robbing, violating, and murdering the people of the enemy territory, acts which even back then were considered war-crimes of the highest order, especially since this had been a territorial conflict between cities within the same kingdom, which only allowed for the killing of active combatants, and only until the leader of the enemy territory had been captured, as the territory would then either fall into the hands of the victor, or be resold to the losing party for a high price.
As the penalty for having one's soldiers run wild and disobey the laws of the kingdom was to declare the entire city bandit-territory, which would have ended in the deaths of all of its inhabitants at the hands of the royal guard, the city-lord had to act quick and immediately ordered the execution of not only the offending soldiers, but all other members of their unit and their captains as well, as they should have prevented this from happening in the first place.
Within the diary, the city-lord even mentioned how he had personally interrogated the son of the necromancer, as he did not want to kill the child of a close friend without even giving him a fair trial. However, not only was he uncooperative during the interrogation, he even tried to justify the actions of the soldiers, calling them justice for having escalated this conflict to a point were the lives of his comrades had been lost in a petty war without meaning.
Infuriated at the attempt to justify the atrocities committed, the city-lord decided to forget the bond he and the father of the criminal used to share, and ordered him to hang with the others. He also asked himself what kind of man his friend must have been when not in his presence, to have raised a child such as this.
What happened next may only be a guess, but seeing as the necromancer is the one sitting in that chair over there, it is safe to assume that he killed himself after finding out the truth.”
The party stayed silent after Professor Lambert had finished telling the story of the Rift, until Brom decided to break the silence.
“By the Light, what a maddening tale. A man who failed ta see his son's descent into evil, a former comrade, the lord of this city, who saw himself deceived by the sorcerer due to the misdeeds of his kin, and ultimately, the unjust end of countless lives, all extinguished by misguided revenge.”
“Indeed. There surely is a lesson to be learned of this tragedy. Maybe that was the reason it was turned into a Rift? Anyway, let us continue the exam. You still have to find and defeat the Boss of this Rift.”, Lambert stated.
“Right. Since we are already here, let's check the room for anything useful.”, Sean said, before starting to inspect the bookshelves for something of value.
Mira and Brom decided that nothing in the office particularly interested them, leading to them sitting down on one of the sofas and eating some of their rations.
As the two enjoyed their break, Eleonora began to inspect the desk. Upon finding the different drawers of the desk to be locked, she retrieved some hair pins from one of her pockets and began to fiddle with the locks. Though she hated her time with the Crimson Snake more than anything else in the world, she could not help but find the skills she had attained there useful at times like this.
Meanwhile, Corvo started to look through the books on the floor and decided to take a few which appeared to stand out from the others, as he might be able to find someone who could translate them for him.
Sean managed to find a small box which looked like it contained some valuables. Deciding to divide whatever he would find inside after they left, he pocketed the box, and moved towards the desk to help Eleonora, while Corvo jumped onto the sofa next to Mira and Brom and joined them for lunch.
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“You know, going here first might have not been such a bad idea after all. Who knows what we might have found in the kitchen. We might not even have been able to enjoy a small break like this.”, Mira admitted, and Brom hummed in agreement.
Their break was interrupted by an exclamation of joy from Eleonora, who managed to open the drawers of the desk. Within them, they found several coins of various metals, an ornate dagger, which was likely used as a letter-opener, a wax-seal, and a portrait drawing of what appeared to be a small family of lykan-beastkin: a father, a mother, and a child.
Sean and the others agreed that Eleonora should keep the dagger and the money, as she had been the one to open the drawers. Upon seeing the portrait, Corvo was reminded of the note Lambert had read to them on their way to the Rift once more, leading to him mentioning it to the others as well.
“Guys, didn't the note speak of the wife and child of the city lord being hidden away in the hedge maze?”
Realising what Corvo meant, the others started to look out of the window and towards the middle of the maze, where they made a quite depressing discovery. A wide path had been ripped straight through the hedges, which led directly to the centre of the maze, where a large water-fountain had been smashed into pieces, revealing a stair-case leading underground.
“I-I think I know where our target is.”, Sean commented, his eyes widened in shock.
With their new goal in mind, the party walked out of the office and back into the entrance hall of the manor. From there, they made their way to the left wing of the ground floor in search of another exit.
The first room they found was a banquet hall with a large table, the legs of which had been broken off, having caused it to collapse on the floor. Several chairs had been destroyed as well, and the room was littered with half-eaten corpses and unmoving zombies. As the room contained nothing of value except some silverware, which the party decided to take, they continued on to the adjacent room, which turned out to be a small hall leading to the barricaded exit at the back of the manor to their right and another room on the left, which they deduced to be the kitchen, as they could hear sounds akin to something rummaging through metal and porcelain objects.
“Anyone else wanna take a look?”, Brom asked as the others removed the shelves and crates which had been placed in front of the exit to prevent zombies from entering. Other than Mira, no one looked too keen on joining him, though Brom had none of it.
“Ah, cam on then! We got all the way here, might as well, no?”, he continued on, and the others reluctantly followed him to the kitchen.
As they reached the door, which had been opened just enough to see shadows moving in front of the lucranium crystals providing light, the noises coming from the kitchen suddenly stopped, causing the party to stop as well. However, before any of them could mention something, a loud, siren-like howl could be heard from the kitchen, followed by two more howls, which caused the sound to amplify, followed by loud barking.
“CLOSE THE DOOR! FAST!”, Sean yelled out, and Brom jumped into action. As the door closed outwards, the urcos inside would not be able to leave the kitchen without breaking it. However, the real problem made itself known as it burst through the door of the exit, as five zombies now started to run towards them, alerted by the howls of the infernal hounds.
“Mira, Brom, in front! We have to break through and get out before more join them and block the way out!”, Sean commanded, and the others jumped into action.
After disposing of the zombies in front of them and running outside, they could see an entire horde of undead make their way towards the manor from the left, which were led by 3 urcos.
“Run towards the maze! We'll take the same way the minotaur did! [Brom, be swift as an arrow!]”, Sean yelled before granting Brom the haste-buff, as he was the slowest in the party.
“Thanks, mate!”, Brom thanked his comrade before following the others towards the hole in the hedge maze.
On their way there, another swarm of zombies arrived from the other side, thus cutting off the way to the other side of the manor as well.
“KEEP GOING!”, Sean shouted at his teammates, who had briefly stopped in their tracks at the sight of the second horde, and the party sprinted towards the fountain in the centre of the maze.
To their luck, there were no undead who had been hiding inside of the maze, likely because they could not smell any living beings inside of it, making it possible for them to reach the fountain without problems. The party ran down the stairs, where they found the door to the hidden wine-cellar completely destroyed, which made it impossible to close the path behind them after stepping through. Despite this, they decided to continue onwards, before Sean told Corvo to collapse the entrance with a < Fireball >.
Before anyone could protest, Corvo had already started to channel the spell and aimed it on the ceiling. Upon coming into contact with the ceiling, the fireball exploded with a loud bang, followed by the ground above the door to give in just as Sean had planned. With their only exit now barred, Sean addressed the rest of the party.
“The only way to get out of here is by touching the Core anyway, and with all those enemies after us, there was no way we could have stayed up there.”
Satisfied with Sean's explanation, the party decided to move forward. They had found themselves in a long, spacious corridor decorated with portraits of beastkin and lucranium crystals on the left and leading to several smaller rooms rooms on the right, which were filled with large barrels of alcohol, and ending in two large and heavy wooden doors, which blocked the path ahead.
“Well, that do be disappointing. Hoped ta get a souvenir for me pa.”, Brom sighed at the sight, as he would not be able to carry any of them out of the dungeon with him. However, as they reached the last room, they found within it several bottles of wine, of which Brom gladly put a few in his backpack.
Having reached the door, however, they were stopped by Kassandra Lambert.
“That's the boss-room, alright. However, I have to warn you, this thing is no easy foe. Even though I'm with you, you'd better give it all you've got in there, you hear me? I'm not going to interfere unless you give up or one of you is about to lose their life.”
Being confronted with what they are about to face, they group began to grow nervous. However, Brom knew exactly what to do to help his friends.
“>The Light is with us. We shall not falter. May our enemies be blinded, and our allies be embraced by the warmth of Order.<”
The miracle known as the >1st Prayer< started to engulf Brom and his comrades, causing them to briefly glow in a golden light.
“The >1st Prayer< removes all fear and brings those who shun the light great pain for at least an hour. No matter what lies beyond that door, now it won't be able ta shake us.”
“Thanks, Brom. Is everyone ready?”, Sean asked, and the others checked their equipment, before giving affirmation.
“We will use the same formation we trained against the Coureur Lizards, with Brom and Mira keeping the Minotaur occupied, while Eleonora and me will be dealing damage whenever we see an opening, and Corvo will aim for weak-points with
Corvo nodded.
“Don't forget to watch its movements and take your potions if needed. Brom will only be able to use two more miracles after he uses >Divine Protection< on himself, so we need to save those for heavy injuries, and Mira will have to save her aura for those emergencies. Should either Brom or Mira be thrown out of the battle, the remaining ones will keep its attention away from them while Corvo tends to them with one of his potions. If I'm out for the count, Corvo will be next in command, as he too needs to stay out of range and can therefore give orders during the fight. After him, it will be Eleonora, and if she too is incapacitated, Mira and Brom need to decide if they can finish the fight quickly or not.
With that out of the way, let's start with some buffs. [Mira, become swift as an arrow], [Brom, be strong like metal], [Eleonora, remain transparent like glass].”
With the last skill, which would bestow Eleonora with the ability to quickly remove herself from the senses of her opponents, Sean would not be able to use another skill during their fight.
“Alright, let's start!”, Sean called out to them, and the party opened the wooden gate.
Upon the doors being opened, they were immediately hit with a heavy stench of death and decay. However, due to the >1st Prayer<, it had no effect on them. Beyond the heavy doors laid the origin of the stench: standing in a large, dimly illuminated room with tiled flooring stood an enormous bipedal being holding a large rusted metal sword, which it dragged behind it as if it was a wet sack. The being possessed the legs of an animal, yet its torso and arms closely resembled that of a human, while the head was unmistakeably that of a bull. The creature was covered in deep wounds which caused white bone to shine through every no and then, and the skin not covered by fur was pale and thin like parchment. Its fur was ripped out in places and some of it had a green tinge to it, as if moss or mould had begun to grow on it. The eyes of the minotaur showed the tell-tale sign of all undead beings, an unnatural, purple glow, which started to briefly grow in intensity as it noticed the new arrivals in the room.
A load, gurgling roar served as the signal that their presence had been noticed, causing Brom and Mira to immediately jump into action.
“>THE LIGHT PROTECTS!<”, Brom shouted as he and Mira charged the beast, followed by rest of their team getting into position behind them.
The first attack, however was dealt by the minotaur, who brought down the piece of rusted metal one would once have called a sword onto the glowing dwarf. Thanks to the blessing of his miracle, he managed to block the attack with ease while Mira went for the minotaur's head with hear spear.
Meanwhile Eleonora began to circle around the beast, before throwing one of her daggers at the back of its head. The minotaur did not dodge either attack, and both the spear and the dagger managed to pierce its skull. However, despite the brain being one of the most commonly known weak-spots of the undead, the walking minotaur corpse seemed unbothered by the damage he received and tried to swat at Mira with the hand not holding the massive sword.
Mira quickly pulled her spear out of her foe's head and kicked against the approaching head, thus managing to use its momentum and jump away from it.
“I'm sure I got through the skull! Something's not right!”, Mira shouted before closing the distance to her target once more, who was currently being occupied by Brom, who had attacked the minotaur's shin with his axe as it tried to follow Mira, which had left a large wound, but did not manage to break through the bone.
Before Sean could make any suggestions, however, Corvo called out that his spell was ready, which caused the others to get into position. Brom charged the leg he had just attacked with his spell, causing it to snap and the minotaur to stumble to a kneeling position on the ground, while Mira and Eleonora moved out of the way to not get hit by the spell.
“ARDEAT!”
With the last word of the incantation spoken, the golden spell-circle in front of Corvo's staff released the
This time, the Minotaur did react to the damage he received, as the radiant flames of the spell burnt through what remained of his brain. Another roar, which was yet again dampened by the damage the creature had suffered before becoming an undead, reverberated through the room, while it began to violently swing around his sword.
Not being able to get out of the way of the sword in time, Brom was hit with the full force of the sword, which managed to fling him across the room and into one of its walls. Though the miracle protecting him managed to block most of the damage, Brom was not able to get back on his feet, which forced Sean to take action.
“Mira, use your aura, I'll help Brom back up! Corvo, go for the fireball!”
Immediately, Mira followed the commands of their team-captain, unclasped her backpack to make it possible for herself to move more freely, and activated her [Weapon-Aura], which caused her weapon to give of a faint glow, as Sean ran towards Brom to give him a health potion and Corvo started to chant the < Radiant Fireball > spell.
This time, Mira did not try to attack the head, but instead went for the weapon of the undead monster, as disarming it would make it easier for them to find its weakness. Eleonora was quick to notice what Mira tried to do and started to help her by closing in on the still blindly flailing minotaur and attacking its non-damaged leg with her sword.
The sound of gargling roars and metal clashing against metal filled the room, as Mira parried the attacks of the minotaur, following by quick stabs and cuts aimed at the ligaments in its arm. Every time it tried to get a hold of the spear with the other arm, Eleonora switched from attack the leg to slashing at the arm, which caused it to go for Eleonora instead, who quickly jumped out of range.
Seconds later, Brom rejoined the two after being helped back on his feet by Sean, and managed to take down the second leg of the undead minotaur, causing it to drop face-first to the floor and stab its weapon into the ground as a crutch to keep itself upright.
Just in time, as Mira's aura had already begun to disappear, Corvo announced that his spell was ready.
“QUICK! SCATTER!”, Sean shouted, and the others did as they were told.
However, just as Corvo was about to release his spell, the minotaur lunged to his right with his empty hand while his right hand still firmly grabbed the sword for support to grab Mira's spear. As she had been exhausted by the use of her skill, she was not able to react in time and had to let go of her weapon as she fell to the ground as the undead being ripped the weapon out of her hands.
Not being able to stop the activation of his spell, but also not wanting to hurt Mira with its area of effect, Corvo decided to aim the < Radiant Fireball > at the left side of the minotaur.
“ARDEAT!”
The golden Fireball now hurtled towards the minotaur, exploding on contact with a loud bang, which was amplified by the acoustics of the room. To Corvo's horror, he could nothing but watch as the force of the explosion not only ripped off the arm of the undead minotaur, but also caused the rest of its body to be flung towards Mira. Eleonora, who had noticed that Corvo had to adjust his aim immediately sprung into action and tried to get to Mira in time to prevent her from getting crushed by the body of the minotaur. Though she managed to reach her in time and put her back on her feet, the minotaur still managed to slam into them, which flung them into Sean, who had also returned to try and help Mira as well. As the three struggled to get back up, Brom sprinted towards them as fast as he could to intercept the still moving minotaur, though it looked like he was not going to make it in time, as the minotaur slowly raised his sword behind his back as he laid on the floor, aiming to throw the hunk of metal at the group in front of him.
Fighting through the feeling of nausea which followed the excessive expenditure of arcanum, Corvo began to panic as he realised that if the sword hit, it would be the end for his friends. It was then when he remembered the spell he had experimented on to use as a secret weapon in emergencies.
'It's risky, but its also the only option we have right now.'
Stealing his resolve, he cast the spell which he had created rune he had found in the memoires of the Enlightened Archmage.
“IN ETERNUM, ARDEAT!”
A large, red spell-circle appeared before Corvo's staff, from which a burning arrow burst forth and hurtled towards the minotaur. Then another. Then two more. A barrage of
As soon as Corvo noticed that the minotaur had seized its movement, he struck the floor with the bottom of his staff, which caused the spell-circle to shatter. Seconds later, a massive headache caused his vision to go white, and he sank to his knees, before vomiting out the rations he had consumed before.
Corvo's state caused the others to scramble back to their feet as fast as they could. As Brom, Sean, and Eleonora checked if the undead minotaur was truly defeated, Mira sprinted towards Corvo to see if he was alright. After having made sure that the minotaur indeed would not stand back up again, they too joined Mira, who tried to help Corvo back on his feet.
“Nay worries, I'll help ya!”, Brom called out to Corvo, before starting to cast another miracle.
“>The Light restores!<”, Brom uttered as he touched Corvo's shoulder, which caused his entire body to glow in a golden light for a brief moment. The miracle known as >Healing Light< was able to heal minor injuries and remove pain to an extent, and Corvo immediately felt some relief, though the massive headache remained.
“CORVO! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT SPELL?”, the voice of Kassandra Lambert boomed throughout the room, causing the group to jump, as they yet again had forgotten about her presence. This time, however, Lambert was not amused at the events having played out before her, rather, she was extremely irate.
“From the looks of it, you are on the verge of stage 3 of wizard sickness! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”, she started to berate him, as he shakily looked to the floor, not able to look her in the eyes.
“I-I needed to do something.”, he murmured, trying to justify his actions, but Lambert continued.
“If you had a spell of which you were not sure what it did, you should have told me before having to field-test it in a situation of life or death, which, and I already told all of you about this multiple times, was not the case here, as I was about to jump in if you were not able to evade that last attack of the minotaur!”
As she finished what she had to say, she looked at her students, who, just like Corvo, were now looking at the floor dejectedly. With a deep sigh, Kassandra Lambert calmed herself down and continued.
“Okay, let's leave it at that for now. Technically, the fault here lies with me as well. I could have jumped in earlier and stopped the last attack before it even happened, as there was no way you could have escaped it, but I kind of wanted to know what Corvo still had in his mind as I saw him aim at the minotaur. Though I could not know that he had created a Soul-Burner-Spell on accident and would try to use it here, the result would have stayed the same if he expended to much arcanum, dropped to the floor, and cracked his head open by falling in a weird way.”
Many questions appeared in the minds of her students, and Lambert decided to answer the probably least obvious one.
“I saw it happen twice. Once on the battlefield, and once in a lesser known Magic Academy in Balmung. The latter guy could be saved, but he stopped practising magic after almost losing his life to such an embarrassing accident. Anyway, I will turn a blind eye to this incident during your evaluation, but Corvo, you and me are going to have a long talk about this once we have returned to Rouclier.”
“So...does that mean...?”, Sean asked, trailing off at the end of the question to make Lambert finish the sentence.
“Yes. You have passed the exam.”, was her answer, which was followed by the cheers of her students.