Chapter 79 - These Cultists Don't Drop Any Loot (Patreon)

Once the Sequence 7 Beyonder among the Patrol Team was disposed of, the rest of the Cultists from the Cult of the Dammed were killed very quickly because they didn't have much power to resist the onslaught of two Sequence 6 Beonyders that were attacking them.

"Dammid... the Beyonder Characteristics were destroyed in the attack..."

Valkorion muttered as he cut apart the sole Beyonder in the Patrol Team of the CUlt of the Dammed that they had just now killed as he found that the Beyonder Characteristics were already destroyed by the Excalibur.

"Even if it wasn't, they would be essentially useless... the corruption on the Beyonder Characteristics of these Low Sequence Beyonders is too high, so the risks of removing the corruption are so high that probably only Angels could succeed in that."

He listened to Mellisandre, who hovered over the corpse of the Beyonder belonging to the Cult of the Dammed as she muttered, while he frowned at that. Initially, he planned to gather some Beyonder Characteristics of the Low Sequence Beyonder to sell them at a later date.

Each Beyonder Characteristic of the Sequence 7 Beyonder was worth around 700 Golden Dragon Coins, while the Beyonder Characteristic of the Sequence 6 Beyonder was worth something around 1,300 Golden Dragon Coins at least.

These were just speculations on the lower end of the spectrum, and considering the number of the Low Sequence Beyonders in this place, Valkorion already foresaw them as walking pouches of gold coins.

Yet the reality could be far more cruel.

"She's right, lad. The cultists are manufacturing them like we create weapons... Even if yar had a complete Characteristic, it would fall apart sooner or later."

Gotrik chimed in as the dwarven Slayer knew a thing or two about the Cult of the Dammed and knew that they had methods of manufacturing the Beyonder Characteristics for the Low Sequence Beyonder en masse and could generate tens of them with relative ease if they invested lots of resources into it.

The only side effect was that they were extremely highly unstable. People with such Beyonder Characteristics were generally weaker than the ones with non-corrupted ones, and at the same time, they had limited lifespans.

"Perhaps if you had an Angel here right now, you could save them, but even then, I doubt... according to the Red Temple, these Low Sequence ones are mass-produced by imitating the Ranger Pathway, Rogue Pathway and Sleepless Pathway all at the Seqeucne 7 with the extensive usage of the Necrotic Energy by one of the Angels of the Cult of the Dammed, with some sacrifices and rituals that are able to create a lot of goons. Unfortunately for the people like this, unless they manage to mend the side effects and reach the Mid Sequence in their respective Pathway, they would die after a few years from the moment they assimilated the Beyonder Characteristic."

Now that Valkorion listened to this, he realized that even if he had obtained such Beyonder Characteristics, there would be practically no one sane enough to buy it.

At the same time, what he wasn't considered before was the fact that if someone caught him selling the things that were produced by the Cult of the Dammed, he could be easily branded as the Cultist and be hunted down by all organizations that were hostile to the Cult of the Dammed.

"We should be going down; these poor bastards don't even have anything valuable..."

The dwarven Slayer stated that he, too, was keen on obtaining some loot from this place because the Slayer Cult operated in this way, where every single member was responsible for his own expenses and wealth. 

So most of the Slayers, if not all of them, also worked as Adventurers, Bounty Hunters, or Mercenaries if there was a possibility to make some money for themselves. Many would even go to be Tomb Raiders as they often dwelled in very dangerous places like the Orange Shore.

Not many people would dare to enter a place like the Undead Asylum Catacombs, but Gotrik Gurnisson not only entered, but he was also delighted with the opportunity.

"Yeah, that's rather unfortunate; I was hoping for some coin... it seems that they have also cleared out everything in the upper parts of this pyramid when they came in."

Valkorion stated that he noticed the lack of anything precious or valuable since they entered the Upper Level of Izalith, which was weird. According to the intel of Red Temple, this place should have some precious things and gold.

And yet, there was nothing.

It seemed that even the madmen bent on spreading the Undeath Scourge through the known world needed to live from something.

Rather ironic thought.

***

When they killed the Patrol Team of the Cult of the Dammed, the trio started descending the staircase into the deeper parts of the pyramid temple, straight to the Firelink Shrine of the former Chaosflame Covenant. 

As they were in the Upper Level of the Izalith, there were actually not many dangers or powerful Undead because, generally speaking, the Upper Level of the Izalith was relatively safe.

Maximally, if one was lucky, there was a slight possibility of encountering some Mid-Sequence Undead at Sequence 5 or so, but even that was rather low. Not to mention, it seemed that the Cult of the Dammed had even managed to clear the upper parts of the pyramid where they were right now being located.

This was good on one side, as they didn't need to be concerned about the Undead, yet on the other hand, they needed to worry about the strength of the Cult of the Dammed, because if they managed to clear out the entire pyramid straight to the vaults, then they must have brought up a significant force with them to here.

This was only affirmed from time to time because in the past half an hour or so, they spent walking, they encountered several other patrol teams.

Like the first one, all of them were the Low Sequence Beyonders at Sequence 7 at best, while only one of the people that they encountered was at Sequence 6, but his power was rather unstable, far more than one would anticipate, and thus, it wasn't even a proper fight.

It wasn't hard to tell that all of these people were just disposable grunts that were meant to patrol the areas and slow down the enemies, while not being the real members of the Cult. Or were perhaps just prospective members that would be their raised as Undead when they were killed?

When it came to these madmen, nobody really knew.

However, what Valkorion knew and was rather unhappy about was the fact that they were all poor as rats because he and Gotrik were searching through every single corpse, and nobody had any possessions.

Something that Mellisandre found rather entertaining was how both of them were pursuing their dream loot and yet obtaining none.

She knew very well that these grunts wouldn't have anything precious on their person because most of them were slaves that were bought by the Cult of the Dammed from the Ghiscari, or they were people who lost everything and dedicated their lives to the Cult.