The Black Grail of Despair Is Close at Hand
Meow Brother and his brothers stayed behind by the ruins of the Ancient Tree to challenge the Red Knight Commander and complete their war trial. Just hearing about it was enough to tell that this would be extremely difficult.
It was hard to say exactly how powerful that Epirote Knight Commander was, but comparing him with the former White Knight Commander, Elder Finoc, would give a rough estimate. Besides, White Knights were an all-rounder class, equally capable of offense and defense. In terms of destructive power, they were nowhere near as wild and ferocious as the Red Knights, who specialized in combat.
By that reckoning, the Big Bird crew might well be about to challenge a Golden-ranker close to Lord Payen's level. Even though they had prepared a power armor in advance, and every member was a Silver-ranker equipped with a divine weapon, they would probably have to suffer serious losses to complete the transfer of inheritance for the Great Oak's Holy Blade.
But the fact that the ones staying behind had a difficult task didn't mean the warriors heading to rescue Lady Kasper would have an easy time of it.
In fact, as the players and NPCs followed Lady Natalie toward the only chapel tower still standing in Avalon Castle, they ran into an entirely unsurprising group of enemies.
Chaos-corrupted Plantfolk undead!
The already strange Plantfolk undead had been given a Chaos-creature template on top of their original nature. Unlike the undead outside, these creatures didn't shamble around. Instead, they'd been granted a corrupted intelligence, which only made them display their "Plantfolk" traits in even more bizarre ways.
Simply put, they had no concept of "health points."
Until the part of their bodies that served as the tree's core was