"Everything is prepared. The Heart of Fire should be powerful enough to deal even with the Sequence 3 Undead if the need arises, but I would certainly recommend avoiding that... the power of the Heart of Fire is so great that if we are not careful, we will be turned to ashes together with the Undead we are trying to kill."
Melisandre, as someone who was both cautious and had high status within the Red Temple, managed to prepare several Sealed Artifacts in case they encountered powerful, Extraordinary Undead.
Evidently, the Heart of Fire was one such Sealed Artifact, and it would have been rather powerful if it could have turned even Sequence 3 Extraordinary Undead into nothing but ashes. The downside, apparently, was that its power was so great that even they could be turned to ash.
So Valkorion was on the fence due to that, as it seemed more of a liability than anything, but alas, he thought it was still better than being killed by the Undead and most possibly becoming one of the Undead as well.
"Less talking, more walking! I'm itching for a good fight."
As Gotrik said to two of them, they started descending into the Undead Asylum Catacombs. Neither Mellisandre nor Valkorion shared the happy mood of the dwarven Slayer, as he was obviously the only one who was in the mood for hordes of Undead to slay.
Everything in this place was filled with cobwebs, spiders, and other types of insects that lived under the ground. The air was filled with the stench of decaying corpses, which wasn't really the most pleasing thing to be around. Nevertheless, all of them continued down through the narrow pathway to reach the catacombs underneath.
It was rather a lengthy process because their destination was deep under the ground, where the Izalith was once located in the long-forgotten age, and fortunately, all of them, or at least two of them, hadn't encountered even a single undead till now.
It was like that for several hours until they finally arrived at the end of the pathway, which led to the enormous underground room. Before they entered the room or the place, they were standing in front of the huge metal door that was tall, around five meters, with engravings of the Pyromancers of Izalith, as Mellisandre stopped both Valkorion and Gotrik from opening the door.
Or rather from smashing them apart, because due to the decay and passage of time, it seemed that opening the doors would be an impossible task, as rust corroded the opening mechanisms entirely and the doors were stuck.
Obviously, there was not any protection, and all three could tell that this was just a normal door, without any special protections. What was once in the place has long been turned to dust due to the lack of maintenance.
It was in such a pitiful state of disrepair that it could fall apart at any moment if one hit it hard enough. It also didn't escape their sight that this place was filled with skeletons and decayed corpses that were fortunate, not risen as Undead.
Many of them were clearly killed here; most probably, it was still from the time when the Izaltih fell to the enemy that destroyed their entire faction, and these people here were a combination of the attackers and defenders.
Some of them were wearing the heavy armor of Knights and more ornamental armor, while the other had something that was reminiscent of the garbs of Mages or so, clearly made from Extraordinary Materials because they were not decomposed... yet.
Only partially.
"Be careful now... behind the doors is the true heart of the Firelink Shrine of the past; we are now near one of the ceremonial rooms, apparently, not far from the Izalith itself, which is the inner shrine of the place. When we enter, the entire place should be swarming with the Undead, so be ready for immediate combat."
Mellisandre gave them a warning because they seemed to reach one of the important checkpoints in their journey. Bad news for them was the fact, that even though the Red Temple scouted this place several times, they didn't have the most accurate map of the Undead Asylum Catacombs at all.
Most of what they had apparently were only parts, and not every time they correlated with each other, and sometimes there was even a great disproportion between each map that the Red Temple obtained.
So, it was pretty unreliable.
"Gotrik and I will go first; you remain behind but still close to us... We are only close-quarter combatants, so we cannot fight long-range, but if you are far from us, we also cannot get close enough in case something goes wrong and you are ambushed."
Valkorion took the role of the leader in their expedition as he gave out several commands for them to adjust their position. Mellisandre, as Pyromancer of the Red Temple and someone on the Pathway of Lord of Light, was the most valuable member of their party.
With her fire capabilities, she could effortlessly destroy the Undead with the might of her fire.
"Wait for a moment..."
Before two of them could go and smash apart the doors, she came to them and placed both of her hands on the Gotrik's war axes as she started chanting something in a language that he didn't really recognize but was similar to the Ancient Hermes Language.
Suddenly, fire patterns started appearing around his war axes and radiating an enormous amount of heat. Valkorion could guess that these were most probably some sort of blessing from the Lord of Light, meaning that his suspicion that she was someone highly favored by the Lord of Light was true.
Even though 'He' was still only a Sequence 1 Angel, he must be very powerful to be giving such things as these freely, and he could tell that the enchantments that Mellisandre gave to Gotrik's waraxes were very powerful.
"With this, you need just one hit for ordinary Undead to turn into the ash... while your Slayer Waraxes are powerful Sealed Artifacts, they were not really that effective against something that isn't technically alive."
For Valkroion, she didn't need to give him any kind of enchantment on his weapon because enchanting weapons such as Excalibur were beyond her capabilities. Valkorion suspected that probably only Angels would do it personally; aside from them, no weaker Beyonder would dare to land a hand on the weapon that belonged to the Unseelie Court and Queen Mab.
"Thak ya, lassie."
The dwarven Slayer then swung the war axes a few times as he noticed that they were even leaving a tray of heat behind them. Clearly, the enchantments that Mellisandre gave them were very powerful.
'Hmm... such power, clearly her connection to Him is very powerful if she could do this just as Sequence 6 Beyonder.'
Valkorion observed Gotrik, who was trying his newfound toy as the dwarven Slayer was clearly delighted by the power of the boost that his weapons received. He knew that the waraxes of the Slayer Cult were powerful Sealed Artifacts, but they were only powerful against the beings that were alive.
Against Undead that didn't have a Life Force, they were just better than average, yeah sure, they were far more durable and sharp than ordinary weapons, but they didn't provide the boost to the attacks and were not really that effective.