Realm Lord
Chapter 83: The Four Sheepman

Chapter 83: The Four Sheepman

The torchlight flickered against the stone walls, casting shadows across the faces of the gathered party. Arthur’s brow furrowed as he processed the information Lara and her team had shared. The cold castle air seemed to grow heavier with each revelation, and Arthur found himself leaning forward, his voice tinged with a mixture of concern and determination.

"So how do we find them?" he asked, his eyes scanning the faces of their new allies.

Lara’s lips curled into a rueful chuckle, though there was little humor in her expression. "That’s the problem..." she began, her voice echoing softly in the chamber. "As far as we know, spells such as this one from this world need to have some sort of spell circle drawn for it, and the totems would usually be placed around the circle."

Arthur tilted his head, the gears in his mind turning as he contemplated this new information.

"So then all we have to do is find the spell circle, right?" he said, straightening his posture with renewed hope. "It’s gotta be somewhere. We just have to keep going room to room."

Before Lara could respond, Kay leaned forward from where he had been leaning against the wall. The tall, broad-shouldered man shook his head firmly.

"Yeah, about that..." Kay’s deep voice cut through the silence, his eyes narrowing slightly as he spoke. "During our first week here, we went through as many rooms as possible to try and find some sort of pattern. This castle has an absurd amount of rooms, but after a while, we stopped getting new rooms." He paused, letting the implication sink in. "It’s been a week since then, and we still have yet to see any new rooms... which means it’s safe to say there aren’t any..." His voice dropped lower, almost to a whisper. "Yet still, we have seen no spell circle."

A heavy silence hung in the air. Arthur exchanged a quick glance with Aziel, whose confident demeanor had become pensive. The crackling of the torches was the only sound that dared to break the oppressive quiet.

After what felt like an eternity, Lara spoke again, her voice taking on a more optimistic tone that seemed almost out of place given the circumstances.

"While that may sound bad, it actually could be worse because we’ve managed to narrow our search down to five possible rooms..." She leaned forward, her eyes brightening with determination. "The only rooms we couldn’t actually explore."

Confusion washed over Aziel and Arthur’s faces. Aziel’s hair caught the torchlight as he tilted his head, his fingers fidgeting with the teared cloth of his pants.

"I thought you have been to every room?" Aziel questioned, his voice carrying a note of skepticism.

Lara giggled softly, the sound strangely discordant with the tension that permeated the room. "Because there are four rooms in this castle that are being guarded."

"Guarded?" Arthur questioned, his hand instinctively flexing shut tightly. His mind flashed back to their earlier encounter—the knight in front of the altar.

"Yes..." Lara’s voice grew more serious. "That sheep knight you ran into before coming here—there are three others like it. They each guard specific rooms and never leave them, no matter what." She sighed, a hint of frustration evident in her expression. "We’ve been to each of these rooms but were unable to actually investigate them due to the guardians."

Aziel stepped forward. "You guys are a four-person party of Chosen whose cores are almost completely filled, and this is the second realm..." The disbelief in his voice was palpable as he continued, "You’re saying you guys can’t beat these things? What rank are they!?"

Lara’s face flattened as she looked downward, her confident façade cracking momentarily. When she raised her gaze again to lock eyes with them, her expression had hardened into something more stern and resolute than before.

"That’s the thing... we don’t know."

Arthur’s confusion only built with each word, his brow creasing deeper. "What do you mean you don’t know? You should be able to sense their rank, can’t you?"

Lara sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping slightly under the weight of their predicament. "That’s just it—we can’t. Moreover, we can’t sense a hint of corruption from them." Her voice lowered, as if she was sharing a dangerous secret. "When facing them, it’s almost like facing... a human."

Arthur’s eyes went wide, words momentarily failing him. The implication hung heavy in the air between them. His mind raced as he recalled his own encounter with the sheep knight.

’Now that she mentions it, I was too busy in our battle to notice, but I don’t remember sensing any corruption from it... I mean, I thought it was an inanimate object before it attacked.’

"You’re not suggesting they’re humans, are you!?" Arthur finally managed, his voice slightly higher than usual.

Lara yawned, though Arthur suspected it was more from stress than actual fatigue. "No, they’re definitely not humans... but they’re not your conventional corrupted monsters either." She shook her head slowly. "We don’t know what they are... but their rooms are the only ones left we haven’t thoroughly searched, so we need to find a way to look around no matter what."

Arthur was still processing this information, his mind whirling with implications and possibilities, when Aziel spoke up, his mind seizing on a detail that arthur had glossed over.

"That’s great and all, but didn’t you say there were five unsearched rooms?" he raised an eyebrow, "So if four are guarded by the ’four sheepmen,’ what’s the deal with the fifth?"

Lara looked between her team members before taking a deep breath, as if preparing to share yet another difficult truth.

"When Kay told you before that we’ve been to every room in the castle... we believe that’s a lie."

Arthur’s brows furrowed deeper, creasing his forehead. "A lie? What do you mean?"

Lara sighed, her fingers tracing an absent pattern on the floor below them. "Well, we have been to every room that the doors allow us to go to... but after they stopped sending us to new rooms and we figured that we explored the whole castle, we realized there was still one room that was crucial to all castles that we have yet to see..."

She paused, meeting Arthur’s gaze directly, her eyes full of significance.

"The throne room."