Hugo grunted and groaned as he hurriedly trudged through the dark rooms and corridors across the keep to reach the ritual room. Because of his weakened state, he wasn’t able to move at his full speed. Even so, he had to admit that the one who healed him—the blonde cleric woman—did an incredible job in patching up his injuries. Any lesser healer wouldn’t have been able to save him in such a dire state.
Under any other circumstances, he would have thanked her. Too bad she’s going after the runes of this keep—his runes. Once he’d learned of her purpose here, all the gratitude he’d felt for her vanished without a trace.
Archmage Frank Victorstein had created those runes. And Hugo was his descendant. This meant that those runes were his to begin with by right. Not only that, he had suffered way too many misfortunes as of late to simply hand them over. The failing of his business, the death of his wife from illness, the mountain of debt he’d acquired…all of it was simply too much for him to handle emotionally. And those runes—the money that he could make from selling them—it’s going to make all that suffering go away.
At first, he’d thought about negotiating with them. They’d probably want a portion of the runes, most likely as payment for saving him. However, after pondering some more, he’d decided that he simply couldn’t let them have even a tiny portion of the treasure. All of it should belong to him only! And he’s not going to let anyone—not even the very same person who’d saved him from near-death—take that away from him.
As he traversed through the keep, he’d made sure to be very careful in his movements—even more careful than when he first came here. During his first arrival, he’d underestimated the chimeragon’s sensory abilities. The notes that were provided to him had detailed plenty on the anatomy of the creature, though not much on its behavior and physical capabilities. The rampage incident had happened before they were able to do further studies on the subject.
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That didn’t matter now. This time, he made sure to be even extra careful when heading towards the ritual room, keeping his footsteps extra quiet as he walked. In addition, he’d also sprinkled some special scent-masking powder on the trail he left behind to hopefully counteract the chimeragon’s perceptive sense of smell. While making preparations for this trip, he’d learned from local game hunters that they would sprinkle a special type of powder on their trails wherever they go hunting to mask their scent from predators.
Surely, if it worked on common predatory animals such as wolves and bears, it should work on a chimeragon as well—which was simply an amalgam of different beasts. At first, he only had a limited amount of the scent-masking powder, so he was reluctant in using it unless absolutely necessary. Now, there’s no point in being stingy. He had to move quickly, not just to avoid the chimeragon that’s lurking around but to race to the ritual room and get the runes before those two women and his traitorous son get to him first.
With every step he took, Hugo could feel his deranged excitement growing more and more from within him. Soon, those precious runes were going to be his—his and his alone. No one else was going to take that from him. No one!
While Hugo was heading to the ritual room, Miri, Anne, and Isaiah were not far behind. After circling all the way around the outer edges of the keep, they were able to reach the front entrance and enter back into the keep that way. Even though Hugo had a head start, his weakened condition should make him just slow enough for them to catch up. Not that any of them would want to move too quickly anyway for the fear of alerting the chimeragon, who was still pretty much prowling around the area.
Time was of the essence here. They just couldn’t let Hugo Victorstein get away with this. Miri, especially, was more than eager to kick that guy’s ass for trying to kill Anne. It was something that she could never bring herself to forgive.
