When last we left Shaw, her ashes were gently floating on the surface of Agheel Lake after an unsuccessful encounter with Flying Dragon Agheel (see Update #23). Was the lake named after the dragon or was the dragon named after the lake or were they both named a third thing?
In any event, Shaw was now sufficiently resurrected and recovered from her jet lag (see Updates #24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32) to resume her journey through the Lands Between. To start, slaying a few low-level monsters to warm-up and then take an amazing sketch of the surrounding scenery, while soaked in blood and shaking a fist at the heavens.
Once that was taken care of, the next step would be to fight the Bloodhound Knight Darriwil at the Forlorn Hound Evergaol. A half-wolf fellow named Blaidd should be summonable for this fight, which would help her ease herself back into fighting more significant foes. Sure enough, the knight was easily dispatched, and Shaw proceeded to converse with Blaidd, but he quickly got tired of the discussion and dismissed her.
At this point, not being quite sure what to do, Shaw decided to just head on down the road for some target practice. The following diagram shows roughly the path she took from the Evergaol to the Stormgate Ruins:
Shaw was basically killing everything in sight; monsters only though, as Shaw has strict principles against killing wildlife be they real or virtual. Since Shaw has a terrible memory, she forgot that killing one of the zombie dudes along the quarry would cause a giant angry bear to spring from the soil. It was not long before she was, once again, facing the enraged ursine opponent. Loyal reader(s) will remember that things did not go well for Shaw the last time she faced this bloody great bear (see Update #3 for details). She could have outrun the bear with Sir Mix-a-Lot this time, but she preferred to stand her ground; this time armed with upgraded weapons, increased vigor, and the 3 Amigos. What follows is a pictorial re-enactment of the battle:
Having bested the bear, barely, Shaw proceeded down the road, knocking down a couple of knights, slaying several soldiers, and pulverizing a plethora of wandering nobles (these are the guys that Shaw has been referring to as zombies for all the update so far). Emboldened and seemingly unstoppable, she next went for the carriage being pulled by two giant trolls. They didn’t put up much of a fight, probably due to the huge chains embedded in their backs. A few minutes later, the main road of Limgrave was completely cleared of all monsters. Aside from possibly needing a bath and a dry-cleaner, Shaw as unharmed and full of runes.
It is a this exact moment that the overconfidence started to set in, and Shaw headed for the Siofra River. A beautiful place to be sure, but full of things that can just one-shot her straight into a “You Died” screen, and whatever the hell this thing is?
No seriously, what is this thing? Am I supposed to be able to interact with it? A trio of nearby messages hinted at possible solutions involving sharp weapons and back sides, but after several seconds of performing unspeakable acts on the dead creature’s posterior, nothing happened. After that, Shaw just did a speed run through the river, finding a couple of sites of grace along the way, only stopping occasionally to die, but also discovering this nice photo op:
The exit of the river brought Shaw to a red place called Caelid. This area of the map did to Shaw what Shaw had done to the corpse in the Siofra River (metaphorically speaking of course, see previous paragraph). She did almost kill a red person, someone called Anastasia, but after parrying and countering her down to almost death, this opponent suddenly went berserk and was impossible to block. Oh well, maybe another time then. Realizing that she was not getting out of Caelid with her runes, Shaw headed back to Stormveil Castle. Here she met this seemingly helpful chap called Gostoc.
She heeded his advice and headed through the side entrance, killed some bird with swords for legs, and rested at a site of grace. Hopefully, she would be able to handle what lies inside the castle…
