Chapter 346 Isn't He Supposed To Be Dead?

"Lets keep going. I don't like this island one bit. The faster we get the treasure and get away the better," Dave spoke solemnly.

The Black Skull order symbol was an eerie sign that he was about to meet one of the Undead Legion's most annoying and troublesome foes.

"I'll scout ahead," Perfect volunteered.

"Go bro, just don't get shot in the face with a cannon," Dave joked with a smile on his face.

"Don't worry." Perfect hopped to the nearest tree branch and began jumping from tree to tree.

The party waited for Perfect Shot's scouting report. A few minutes later, Perfect Shot reported to them over the party com.

"There are three groups of undead heading your way. Take a left and head toward the mountain, it's the safest path with no undead along it."

"Okay you heard him, follow after me," Dave said. He held his shield ahead of him and began cautiously walking forward.

The rest of the party followed after him.

It took the players half an hour to reach the mountain base. They had followed Perfect's instructions and didn't meet with any hostile undead along the way. Perfect jumped down from atop a tree and landed amongst the players.

"Stop here and hide yourselves. We have a problem," Perfect said.

The party hid themselves behind trees and bushes. If they moved a few steps ahead they'd be out of the forest and into barren land.

"What's the problem?" Dave asked.

"That" Perfect said pointing at the mountain.

The party peered out from their hiding position to look at where Perfect was pointing.

The mountain was barren. There were no trees or bushes along its slope.

"There is a cave entrance halfway up the mountain. That's probably the entrance to what the blue-coated pirate called the Palace. It's heavily guarded. If we go up the mountain we'll be exposed, and the undead will notify the groups in the forest. Not to mention the ones that are inside the mountain," Perfect said.

"Let's wait until it's night then. We can go further then. We'll be hidden from sight, and when we get to the mountain, we can figure stuff out," Flanker suggested.

"I don't think it'll work. The Undead have night-vision. We'll be seen from miles away," Dave said.

"I say we risk it. Let's run all the way there, at worst we'll be spotted and fight a few undead," Fortress pitched in.

"Uh, did you guys forget we have an assassin?" Ralph said, then turned to Mercy and added, "Hun, can you kill the undead there without being spotted?"

Caitlin nodded at Ralph and disappeared from view using [Vanish].

The players waited for Mercy to do her job.

Notifications of Mercy killing hostile Undead appeared in the party chat. She was killing them at an extremely fast pace. And from the looks of it, the undead had yet to realize that their allies were being decimated.

"It's done," Mercy spoke over the party chat.

"Damn, that was fast." Flanker commented.

"Let's get going, we don't want them to realize that the guards are dead," Dave said, and the whole party followed after him as he sprinted towards the cave on the mountain's slope.

When Dave arrived, he noticed the bodies of a dozen or so undead. All the undead had died by having their throats slit. Their necks separated from their bodies. But they were so close to each other that Dave found it hard to believe that Mercy killed them all without any of them noticing.

"That's incredible," Dave praised her work.

"Guys, look," Flanker said. A few feet away from the pile of corpses were several cannons ready to fire.

"If we had gone up, we'd probably have been turned to swiss cheese," Flanker said.

"That's a cannon, not a machine gun. If it hit you, you'll be turned to nothing, it's 1,000,000 HP per shot," Fortress said.

"Guys, quiet please, we're about to go inside. Use party-voice chat to talk," Dave said.

"Alright, boss," Flanker replied through the party-voice chat.

"You don't need to talk if you don't have anything important to say, bro," Dave added.

"Alright, when there is something important, I'll be sure to mention it," Flanker added.

"Bruh, that was Skelly's cue for you to shut up," Fortress said.

"Okay, shutting up now."

Dave rolled his eyes at the incorrigible priest and entered the cave first.

There was an orange light coming from the inside of the cave, probably from a torch or something.

Dave slowly made his way inside, making sure to keep his eyes peeled for any traps or contraptions that he might find along the way.

The cave tilted down after a while, and Dave knew they were going deeper into the mountain.

As they went past one of the torches, they heard the sound of boots coming their way. An undead was leisurely walking toward the exit of the cave.

Dave gestured to everyone to stick to the walls, then he turned to Mercy and gestured with his head toward the incoming undead.

Mercy nodded and disappeared from view. Her footsteps were light, and soon, only the undead's footsteps echoed through the cave entrance.

Suddenly, the undead's footsteps stopped, and there was the sound of something metallic falling to the ground.

"Clear," Mercy said through the voice-com.

The party resumed their walking and found a headless undead on the ground. His armored helmet was probably was caused the sound.

The cave exit was a few minutes' walk away. The players approached it with caution. Peering out of the cave exit, Dave saw a large opening. The mountain was apparently a hollowed-out inactive volcano.

There was a large palace built inside the volcano, but it looked dilapidated and as if it could collapse at any moment.

"That's probably where the area boss is. Look, over there," Flanker pointed. There were dozens of undead on the palace walls. And there were several cannons set up along its walls.

"Mercy, can you get up there?" Dave asked.

Mercy looked at the palace and said, "I can't get there. There are True Light lamps along the way." Mercy pointed at a few red lamps in the area around the palace.

"If I go under these lamps, they will negate my invisibility," Mercy said.

"How the fuck can we get there then, damn it, man, if we get shot with those cannons, it's game over ," Flanker groaned.

"Quiet, let me think," Dave said. He was subconsciously stroking his beard.

Dave's eyes wandered around the area. There was only one way toward the palace. There were no other paths leading in beside the cave they were inside.

Dave turned and looked behind him ad moved toward the cave exit.

"Where are you going, man?" Ralph asked.

"I have an idea, it's risky, but worth it if it fails we'll have to improvise."

Dave went to the undead Mercy had just killed. He removed all of his armor and began removing the undead's armor and equipment.

"What are you doing Davey, you know you can't forcefully loot bodies. Even if you wear their equipment, you can't benefit from their stats. Also, I bet your Doom Knight armor has better stats," Zoe said.

"Yeah, I know Zoe, but I'm not taking these for their stats," Dave said and began equipping the undead pirate's items.

***

You have manually equipped a non-loot-able item.

You will only benefit from the equipment's [Skin] and not its stats.

***

Dave ignored the notification and finished equipping the armor.

"How do I look?" Dave asked.

"Like a raggedy man," Zoe replied.

"Good, it should work then," Dave said and moved back to the party.

"What are you wearing, man?" asked Flanker

"A disguise," Dave said and walked out of the cave.

Flanker shook his head at Dave and said, "Man, that's just crazy."

"Yeah, so crazy it just might work," Dave replied through the party chat and walked toward the lanterns.

He was the only undead in the party, and with his current disguise, he could blend in with the rest of the pirates. If his plan didn't work then undead would probably shoot at him with the cannons, but with his [Unyielding] skill, he could take on the cannon shots without dying and can give the rest of his party the time to attack.

When he was under the lantern light two one of the undead noticed him and shouted, "Who goes there?!"

Before Dave could reply, another said, "That's Hordy, wudya forget this time?"

"Me pistol," Dave replied, mimicking the voice of Dikenz to the best of his abilities.

"Ah, I knew it, ya shud neva walk out without ye pistole matey, open up for our fella, also get that throat of yours checked matey, ya might have maggots in it, ya sound like an off-tune harp! HA!"

The two undead began laughing and opened the gate for Dave.

"See, told you it would be easy," Dave said with a snicker through the party-chat.

"Well you got in, how do we get in?" Flanker asked.

"Give me a minute," Dave said and walked inside the Palace.

Looking from inside he noticed that there were several leavers on the gate. One was probably to operate the opening and closing of the gate as it had a small gate symbol on top of it. The other two had two different symbols. One had a lantern symbol on it, and the other had a cage symbol on it.

'This one is probably for the lanterns. The other one should be for activating traps I think.' Dave thought to himself as he walked inside the palace.

"Where ya going Hordy, ya cabin is that way, did ya forget where your own cabin is now? Ha!" the other undead said as he laughed.

"Beg yer parden, I tend to forget lots nowdays. It's boring on this island ya-know," Dave said.

"I belive ya mate, benn eight hundred years since we've been here. Gangplank been saying the one to open the vault'll come soon, eight hundred years's too much matey. C'mon get ya pistol and swap with Denver, he'd prolyl bored out of his mind by naw."

Dave nodded and went toward the location the undead had pointed at earlier. A wide draugr smile was plastered on his face.

"Mercy, get ready. You'll only have one chance,"

Just as he got out of sight of the gate guards , Dave snapped his fingers. An explosion echoed next to the gate.

"What's that?" the two undead were startled and went to inspect. They came off the Palace walls and went to where the explosion sounded. They saw that the levers operating the traps, door and the lanterns were destroyed. A large boulder had crashed into them.

"By Davey-Jones, what in da world just happened?" More undead rushed toward the gate, even Dave came to 'inspect'.

"I don't know, last to enter was Hordy to come through, then the explosion blasted me old ears," one of the two undead guards spoke.

The rest of the undead turned to Dave. He held his arms upright and said, "I aint done nothin wrong fellas, look there, that rock fell on the levers, pure ol stinking luck, aint me fault i say" Dave said.

"He's right, I've seen Hordy getting in, he's a good lad, he didn't do nothin wrong. This place's rundown and is no different than our old bones, this was bound to happen. Guess Hordy was unlucky to pass at this time."

"Yeah well, the levers can be fixed ain't no problem. I got me tools on me. I can fix em in no time," an undead said.

"Yo got ya pistol Hordy," the first undead said.

"Haven't got it yet,"

"Pistol? But I gave Hordy his pistol a few minutes ago."

The undead's tags turned yellow. Dave noticed that they were about to become hostile.

"Mercy, where are you, shit's about to hit the fan, and I'm probably exposed."

"I'm on my way," Mercy said.

"Hang on, that's not Hordy, Hordy doesn't have that beard!" one of the undead probably just realized by this point, and just as he spoke, all the undead around Dave had their nametags slowly turn red.

"Shit, guess my acting skills aren't worth an Oscar," Dave grinned and drew his sword, chopping at the first undead.

The other undead drew their cutlasses and charged at Dave.

One undead ran away to report.

But after taking two steps, he fell to the floor with his head tumbling away from his torso.

Dave struck his bastard sword at the nearest undead, and Mercy joined in. It took them twenty seconds to kill off all the undead at the gate. Thankfully, they didn't set off any alarms. And even the huge ruckus at the Palace gate didn't notify any other undead.

The [Spectral Skull] explosion had pulled all of the nearest undead to the gate. And unless one of them sounded the alarm, no more would come there again.

"Alright, guys, you can come," Dave said and wore his Doom Knight armor.

The rest of the party ran toward the Palace gate as fast as they could.

"What now?" Flanker asked as he looked over his shoulder, afraid he might get jumped on by some pirates.

"One of the undead spokes of Gangplank still being here, let's explore the area," Dave said.

The party split up and carefully searched the first floor of the Palace. They reported what they found over the party chat, which was a whole lot of nothing.

The party then grouped up in front of the last door on the lowest floor. It was a wooden door that looked shut tight.

Perfect said, "This must be what we are looking for. Look over there."

"What's so special about that door except for being big? We can probably find the treasure upstairs," Flanker said.

"Look closely at the floor. There's dust here. And no footprints. This means that this door hasn't been opened for a long time. If there is something important, I say it's hidden behind this door. If we go upstairs, we might just find more undead. And who hides their treasures on the top floors? It's always a cavern or a sub-floor level."

"Flanker's right, let's bust this door open," Dave used, [Stamped], and slammed into the door.

But the door didn't budge.

"Damn, we'll need a stronger attack," Dave said and was about to use [Ray of Flames] when Zoe calmly walked over to the door and pulled on a small handle, opening the whole thing up.

"Sometimes you just need to pull, Davey." Zoe said with a smirk.

Feeling embarrassed, Dave coughed and walked through the door.

They were inside yet another cavern, it had lit torched and a set of stairs leading down.

"Careful guys," Dave reminded the group and went ahead.

After a few minutes of walking down the stairs, Dave stopped. In front of him was an enormous stone wall that was riddled with runic carvings and prints. There was a person sitting on a crate next to it.

The person was peeling an orange. He was an undead with a green nametag.

The undead had a long sailor coat and a hat, his right leg was missing and he had an eyepatch over covering his right eye. He also had a long beard, and it was wet with orange juice.

The undead turned to Dave's party and said in a gruff voice, "Ya all here for the treasure? Gotta say your luck is as wretched as me old bones. Got meself another chance only to forget the key to this vault," the man said in a rotten toothy smile.

Dave inspected the man wearing sailor clothing.

***

Gangplank

The Pirate King

Information

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***

"What? You look like you've seen a ghost, HA!"