Loopshard

Beck told them about stage nine while they ate, and afterwards Adam and Kat spent some time going over the list she’d taken with her. He was able to read it even though she was a hologram, so long as she held it up towards him or placed it in front of herself on the tavern table.

Like she had already guessed, the list was just a description of each of the various bloodfiend leaders in Moonport, which explained their territory and roles, along with what powers they had inherited from their progenitors.

Adam asked Beck if the Patriarch’s cache had been under the lighthouse as well, and he said yes, which meant that there was a way to crack the stage.

“We know of a way to trigger the Patriarch early,” Adam summarised. “So, after killing him on the morning of day two by the church, it’s possible to use his key to access the lighthouse chamber and find the list that describes the other bloodfiends and where to find them. That should make the stage a lot easier.”

“You’ve gotta teach me how to read this nonsense,” Beck said.

Adam went through the list, describing the meaning of each of the major words, such as district names, bloodfiend names like the Warden and Guard Captain, and the descriptions of their roles and powers. Unfortunately, Beck didn’t have the list from his stage, since he hadn’t picked it up. This meant that Adam couldn’t be absolutely sure there weren’t different titles and unknown words that Beck might encounter in his next loop when he located the list. Adam just did his best to prepare his friend for whatever he might encounter.

One thing was clear though, the eradication challenge for Moonport was extremely difficult to anyone who didn’t possess some means of tracking.

I wonder if Beast has some way of sniffing out bloodfiends, after all, Kat could smell blood with her transformation active.

Adam went over the Patriarch’s tome next, translating the interesting parts for the others, but, like the Flayed Lady had promised, there wasn’t anything insanely powerful within. He actually discovered that he knew two of the patterns already, specifically Bolt and Snare from the Summoner wand, although these were alternate versions that could be rendered entirely in 2D. The four other patterns within were for spells called Claw, Propel, Clot, and Dilution. The Claw manifested a large claw around the caster’s right hand, Propel was like a half-powered spring boots activation, Clot was like a weaker version of Blood Crystal that mostly just slowed down blood flow, and Dilution did the opposite, thinning blood to make it flow faster.