Chapter 94 - An Unexpected Reunion

Merlin walked out of the treeline and into the clearing. With both his weapons drawn he slowly made his way over to the abandoned old church. The closer he got, the more details of disrepair he saw. Whatever part of the building's stone exterior wasn't covered by large cracks or obvious signs of corrosion was mostly covered by a mix of moss and mould.

As he cautiously entered the building, he saw that the inside was just as bad as the outside. No, perhaps it was worse.

As he looked around he noticed that the floor, what was left of it anyway, was just rotten wood. The rest of the floor was covered in shards of roof tiles, and as Merlin stared up towards what should have been the ceiling, all he could see was the night sky.

"I wonder why this place was abandoned out here, or why it was even placed out here to begin with." Merlin wondered out loud, his inner lore hunter found something interesting about abandoned ruins of a church being left seemingly in the middle of nowhere. "Just what purpose did you have so far away from civilisation?"

As he walked further into the building, he began hearing scratching noises coming from the end of the room. It seemed to be coming from behind the altar that had barely been spared from the roof collapsing on it.

Merlin took another step closer towards the altar, the roof tiles crunched underneath his shoes, and the rotten wood underneath that let out loud creaks. The scratching became louder and faster, it almost seemed like the creature was panicking.

Another step and the same thing happened, Merlin could hear frustrated grunts coming from behind the altar. But when he took another step, everything became silent.

The floor creaked once more as he raised his foot, and at that moment the ghoul lunged out from behind the altar in a desperate attempt to rip Merlin's head off. Unfortunately for the ghoul, this time Merlin knew what he was up against.

Merlin avoided the claw and plunged his daggers into the ghoul's body. One punctured the creature's eye and the other hooked around and pierced its neck. With a loud roar, Merlin used his newfound leverage over the creature's head to throw it to the ground. The creature clawed at his leg, but Merlin ripped his dagger out of the creature's eye before plunging it into where he expected the heart to be.

The creature let out one final pain-filled grunt before it lost all the strength in its body. Merlin's calf was finally free of the creature's claw, although it had done a significant amount of damage to it, forcing him to limp.

Merlin sighed with disappointment as the creature didn't seem to drop anything. He limped over to the altar, the ground underneath him transitioned from rotten wood to cracked stone as he made his way up a few steps to get onto the elevated stone platform that the altar was resting on.

His calf left a trail of blood behind him as he walked up the steps. As he made his way behind the altar, he could see that there were several deep claw marks on both the altar and the floor, mostly around where the two met.

"That's suspicious." Merlin's eyes locked onto the section between the floor and the altar, besides the claw marks and cracks, he noticed a very small gap between the two. When he reached his hand towards the gap, he could feel some kind of airflow air flowing out from it. "A secret room under an altar, how cliché."

Merlin tried pushing on the altar but it didn't move. "Well, If a ghoul cant force it open, what luck would I have?" Merlin shook his head at his own actions before he started running his hands over the intricate designs around the altar, looking for some kind of hidden switch. 

A few minutes passed, but Merlin couldn't seem to find it. Nevertheless he continued his search, there had to be something here. As he was concentrating on his search, he heard voices in the distance, although it sounded like they were coming closer.

"This is the last time we're coming here. We're gonna fall behind if we don't get back to questing." It sounded like a grumpy young man was yelling at someone else, meaning there were at least two people in the area.

"That looks like blood. Did someone get it before us?" This time it was a woman's voice.

"No, they better not have, we've waited for it to respawn for half an hour." Another woman's voice piped up this time, meaning there were at least three. But something sounded familiar about that voice.

He heard the crunching of grass and forest soil get closer and closer, until several silhouettes appeared at the church's doorway.

"Who is that?" The grumpy man asked, "Looks like they got... Wait that's not the vampire."

Merlin was currently sitting down in front of the altar, partially resting while waiting for his leg to heal. Something in his brain clicked at that moment, the guy's voice, it was extremely familiar to him, and only now did he realised who the group were.

"It looks like some kind of, zombie?" Another man's voice spoke up, this one was deeper than the rest. "Wait, that person is."

"Oh, it's the plant guy." The small blonde girl spoke up, as she walked further into the building, the moonlight could finally light up her face, revealing the girl to be Alvira.

"You gave Ty such a creative nickname, why do I just get plant guy?" Merlin playfully remarked at his new nickname. He greeted the rest of the group as they walked into the building, and they greeted him back.

"Alright then, how about sadist?" Alvira blurted out a nickname suggestion.

"On second thought, plant guy has a nice ring to it." Merlin sighed, before addressing the rest of the group. "What were you guys saying about a vampire?"

The group sat around and began explaining to Merlin about how Alvira had gone around town asking about vampires, and eventually she received a hint about a possible sighting.

An old lady who ran a spice shop had told them about a rumour she heard from a merchant. This merchant told her about how his wagon was attacked on his way back from Caphyae. The merchant explained that the creature looked human, but one of the guards had gotten bit on the neck, leaving two puncture marks similar to the vampire bites he had once read about. When asked what happened to the presumed vampire, the merchant just said that his guards fought it off, and they made their way back to town.

Merlin just found out that the reason the roleplayer group had run into him in the first place was because they got a quest to validate the rumours of vampire sightings in the forest, which they had completed.

But it seemed as though Alvira was coming back to this location whenever she could so that she could hunt down the one vampire that spawned here, all in the hopes of getting a vampire soul to drop.

"Wait, it spawned during the day time, was it not affected by sunlight at all?" Merlin asked while gazing up at the hole in the roof. There were several different types of vampires, pulled from various myths and legend.

There was the movie stock standard, the night stalkers who burnt up in the sun, but then there were also a large variety of daywalkers, it ranged from perfectly immune to the sun's rays to severely weakened but not destroyed by it, then there was also the case of half breeds, dhampirs.

There were also the more ghoul or zombie-like vampires, and even ones that looked more like gargoyles. Vampires, and other blood-sucking monsters came in all shapes and sizes, and some didn't even suck blood.

"It didn't burst up into flames, no. But it seemed slower than I expected." Alvira was the first to comment.

"Perhaps some kind of daywalker then, maybe it was weakened by sunlight, but not destroyed." Merlin was even more surprised that a daywalker appeared so early in the game, let alone a ghoul. "But it seems the spawn changes at night, I was attacked by a ghoul that led me here."

"Actually, perfect timing. There seems to be a secret passage under this altar, but I cant find the switch to open it." Merlin stood back up, it seemed as though he thought of a good idea. "Hey big guy, come up here for a second."

The hefty barbarian looking fellow did as he was asked, he climbed the stairs and walked over to the altar. Merlin only now bothered looking at the guy's username, which ironically enough was Tiny.

"You see where the scratches are on the altar? Give it a big whack with the hammer, lets see if you can shatter the locking mechanism." Merlin revealed his plan while slapping the side of the altar he wanted Tiny to hit.

After Merlin took a few steps back, Tiny had positioned himself comfortably next to the the altar and was loosening up his shoulders before preparing himself for a heavy hit.

Merlin heard the guy chant a skill under his breath, and as the hammer ripped through the air and collided with the altar, a loud bang reverberated throughout the church, causing his party and Merlin to cover his ears.

The resulting damage was a deep set of cracks in the altar's side, but nothing seemed to be moving. After waiting for the cooldown once more, Tiny tried again, this time giving a little run up to build some extra momentum.

The loud crash reverberated throughout the church once more. Due to the swing ending up a little high, a large chunk out of the altar had been broken off and was now flying off towards the other side of the church, shattering further as it collided with the stone wall.

"Damn, this stupid thing." Tiny cursed before psyching himself up for one more swing.

This time, alongside the loud crash, the altar seemed to almost fling off its hinge as it flew backwards, revealing a staircase underneath.

As Tiny sat down to take a breath, and everyone else climbed up onto the platform to see the damage, Merlin received a couple notifications revealing that he was in the right place.

「The quest "The Caphyae Kidnappings." has been updated.」

「The quest "Lost and Found." has been updated.」

"This seems to be the right place for my quest, I just got an update." Merlin spoke up, while looking at the group.. "And based on what you were saying earlier, there's a pretty good chance there is going to be more vampires down there. Do you want to party up and do it together?"