Altea continued her narration of the content of the journal, in it, the officer stated that it took them and his men three days to clean the main floor of the castle from the rubble, human remains, and weapons.
Soldiers under Franz's orders felt observed, they even swore to see shadows passing by them but not hurting them.
He himself had that kind of eerie feeling and attributed it to the master of the castle watching them, it had not attacked them so he had to be somewhat pleased by their actions, or else he would have made it clear by now.
Franz noted that the fog went away and the sky looked different at night, he wasn't sure why but he couldn't find the Pole star.
The officer had seen a town down below and sent a squad of three to seize some supply with force if necessary but none had returned.
He suspected there could be Russian troops involved since he had the knowledge that the area was under the invasion of the red army, but he couldn't risk more of his men to check it out in the end, he prayed to find the master of the castle soon.
Five days into the mission food and water supplies were running low, the castle didn't seem to have been built with any water supply at all, it was an oddity considering they should have been built to withstand prolonged sieges.
Luckily they were in a mountain range and it rained so he could use the rain to at least resupply, and hunt in the nearby woods.
Franz noted that they killed an abnormally large snake and some hares so big half of them could feed his starving man, and they tasted very good even with their improvised cooking with the little resources they had.
He also noted that they found no throne room in all of the upper levels of the castle, and wondered who had designed the place.
It felt to him that the whole place was more or less built as a statement, as a decoration rather than with a purpose in mind.
Big halls, gorgeous rooms, there were remains of furniture that was meant to impress but there were no restrooms, no kitchen, hell there wasn't even a chimney to heat the place!
No human would've lived in a place like that, so the man was now totally convinced that a supernatural being had built and lived in that castle.
Seven days into the mission they found a way into the basement of the castle itself, it was buried under what seemed an explosion caused by human explosives.
By the looks of it, the group of soldiers that had preceded them had used some stick of dynamite to seal that passage.
The reason they had done so became apparent as they gained access to the lower floors of the castle.
If the floors above ground were awe-inspiring by size and imagination alone, the floors below were another thing entirely.
Most of the rich stuff was still there, including more gold than Franz and his men were ready for, even if there wasn't a vampire there was enough to build tanks out of the metal.
The officer inferred they wanted to bury the treasure so no other would find it easily, but something had happened and made them unable to recover it themselves.
The throne room was down below, and there was a conference room of sort, a table with thirteen seats around that reminded Franz of the Arthurian myth.
A big unwieldy sword was stuck in the middle of the table, it was a two-handed sword with a black flamberge blade.
The long straight wavy blade featured no ricasso even being almost ten feet tall and was decorated by three big green agate stone spheres on his hilt.
One joined the black blade and the Hilt, one was in the middle of the grip and the last served as the pommel and counterbalance to the blade.
There was no cross-guard, but there was a handguard that began and ended on the spheres, jumping from sphere to sphere and forming an hourglass shape, and was sharpened to be a two-edged razorblade.
While it was probably feasible to lift the sword there was no way to handle a sword that lengthy and heavy with a handguard like that without cutting one own hand clean off at the palms.
The weapon didn't seem to be painted or coated and rather than the metal it seemed like the black stuff was obsidian stone.
If Franz had made a correct conclusion the blade was very brittle and of little use outside of decorative purpose, but it was sharper than steel concluded Tina who knew the qualities of obsidian for her academic curriculum.
The last bloodied pages were unreadable; the blood had clotted and sealed them, and the journal itself was already in shambles enough as it was, attempting anything meant the destruction of the Journal itself.
Besides, even if they attempted to open it with water the ink was faint already as it was, even pretending they could salvage the pages somehow, the text would have surely disappeared during the attempt to remove the clot.
Sara tried to act as a leader donning her fake fangs, starting to narrate the same story, with a twist for a change of pace.
The change involved the group as vampires in search of power and the other things that vampires do seek, like human blood.
Having been dragged out of her will, Tina was the only surviving human in the group and she was to be used as a blood supply but her knowledge had spared her to be drained and now she was about to lead them into the castle.
Tina wasn't exactly happy that her best friend had just volunteered her to spearhead the expedition into that dreadful castle, but she had no choice.
One way or another they had to go inside to see if the journal was just a clever hoax to get the hype for adventure or something else.
They waded into the fog slowly reaching for the keep, the large door of the structure was missing, and inside there was nothing of note besides the obvious signs of the tank firing its shells into the structure itself.