Rise of the Blood Sovereign

Chapter 3: The Tenth Floor

It was already nighttime and there were far fewer servants walking around the castle than during the day. Lyle was lucky as none of the guards had stopped him to talk or had called out to him, but he knew that his luck wouldn't last for long.

He needed to find a way to get up, but it was hard, even if he was able to get to the tenth floor, he would need to find a way to pass the guards that were definitely keeping the duke safe.

From what the servant girl had told him, there were two guards stationed at the staircase, but when she was returning from giving the duke food, she saw that there were two more that were passing by.

Taking care of the two guards wouldn't be too hard for Lyle, with his two daggers and the element of surprise, he would be able to kill them without making any noise, but if there were more, then he would definitely be unable to take care of them without any noise.

He needed to find a way to get information about the number of guards at the staircase. He moved past the staircase and entered a room that was used by the guards as sleeping quarters. The sleeping quarters were full as most of the guards were sleeping right now, the duke made multiple sleeping quarters on each floor as he wanted his guards to be able to respond to any threat immediately without needing to move up and down the floors.

Lyle was able to see that out of the 10 beds in these sleeping quarters, 7 were occupied. He looked at the window at the end of the room and made a plan. He would be unable to simply climb outside the castle and enter through a window as all the windows on the tenth floor had iron bars on the outside, but scouting the inside was possible.

He would wait until a patrol team passed by the staircase before going up and dealing with the two guards who were stationed there. From then, he would need to pick up his pace and quickly reach the duke, being sneaky and unnoticed would not work and he would need to run and kill any enemy that he came across quickly.

Lyle opened the window slowly, the creaking of the wooden frame made him tense as he feared that the guards would wake up.

"Yaaawwn, man, why are you-" One of the guards woke up, but before he could even ask his question, his throat was penetrated by one of Lyle's daggers that he had thrown at him.

Before the man could produce any sound or move, a part of the dagger that was inside his throat suddenly broke off and exploded upwards, reaching his brain in an instant and killing him.

Lyle panted a bit as he had been using his ability multiple times tonight. The skill he used to make a part of his blood dagger break off and form a small blade that would destroy the inside of the enemy was incredibly useful, but also very draining.

He scanned the room and upon finding that none of the other guards had woken up, he moved to the guard he had killed and retrieved his dagger before putting the corpse into a sleeping position and covering him with a blanket so that nobody would suspect that he was dead.

Lyle moved back to the window and quietly went out, he used his daggers to slowly climb up as he stabbed between the bricks that were used to make the castle.

He made sure to move slowly and not produce any noise that could alert the death guards that were guarding the tenth floor.

He quickly scanned the outside of the castle and moved to the left side as that was where the staircase was. He found a window and started moving towards it, upon reaching it he started going to the side as he wanted to get a good look at what the situation was inside.

The very moment he stabbed his dagger between the bricks that were on the right of the window, he stopped. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he was able to sense that somebody was at the window, he didn't know if the person was looking through the window or if his back was turned to it.

One wrong movement and the enemy would be alerted of his presence. He gulped a bit as he stopped moving and waited, he waited for the enemy to move away from the window, hopeful that his dagger and right arm were not visible to the enemy.

Every second was like an eternity, Lyle was able to feel his muscles getting fatigued as he waited for over a minute before the person moved away from the window.

Lyle moved up and took out a shard of glass from his pocket. He used the glass to look inside the window, well, he didn't try and find any details this way, he merely used the reflections from the shard of glass to check if anyone was close to the window and if it was safe to look inside.

After confirming that it was indeed safe, he looked inside and found two guards at the staircase and 3 more who were passing by.

'One of those three was probably the one at the window, it seems I lucked out, he didn't notice me.' Lyle thought as he slowly went back to the window he used to go out with.

The patrol team had just left, and they would definitely not be returning soon, this was a golden opportunity for Lyle to go up and deal with the two guards at the staircase and go to the duke.

Upon reaching the window, he repeated the same process as he did with the upper one, he used a shard of glass in order to check if there was anyone nearby before entering the quarters.

Nobody had woken up during the time he was gone, but there was one more person that was occupying a bed. Lyle glanced at the man that was lying on the bed and sleeping before moving towards the door.

As he passed next to the new person, he suddenly stabbed his throat with his dagger before using the same skill he previously used.

The man's eyes were wide open in shock as he stared at Lyle with a confused expression.

'How did he notice me?' Those were the last thoughts running through his mind before he died.

'Not a bad try, but my ability is to control and sense blood, that includes the blood flowing inside your body, your heart was pumping blood way too fast for a person who was sleeping.' Lyle said to himself as he closed the man's eyes and put a blanket over him.

'I need to finish this fast, my mana is down to half and the archmage will probably get alerted the moment I kill the duke, I will need to leave the castle as soon as possible after killing him, otherwise I will definitely get captured again.'

'In the worst-case scenario, I will need to jump out and try to scale down the castle wall before fleeing the city.'

Lyle left the quarters and did a quick scan of the hallway he was in. There were no guards present, and there were only 2 maids and 2 servants around. The servants had just returned from the 10th floor and were holding trays that held empty cups and plates, it seems that the duke or someone else had just finished eating.

Lyle passed by the two maids and stopped at the staircase, upon making sure that nobody was looking at him, he made his way up the staircase. As soon as he was visible, the two death guards turned and stared at him.

"What are you doing here?"

"Ah, sorry, I have an important message for his lordship," Lyle spoke with a slight stutter and acted as if he was nervous, his body language made the two guards ease up, but they still stared at him.

"What message?"

"Ah, here, I was told that you can also take a look, whatever happened won't be a secret for long," Lyle said as he took out a parchment from inside his armor. The parchment was of course empty, but it was rolled and the guards couldn't notice.

One of the death guards motioned to him to come closer and he did so, he gave the guard the parchment and the latter unfurled it and tried to read the contents.

"What is this?"

"Hmm, what is it, Joh-" Before the second guard could finish his question, his throat was penetrated by Lyle's dagger.

The first guard was slow to respond, the parchment blocked his view and he was still oblivious that his friend had died, as soon as he put the parchment down, another dagger came and his fate became the same as the first guard's.

'So far so good, now for the hardest part of the mission.' Lyle said as he took a deep breath before running towards the duke's room. Even though he was running, his steps were silent and almost inaudible.