After the brief exchange of pleasantries and promises of alliance, Assistant Professor Vyn signaled to the cloaked men standing behind him. These men immediately brought along some projection devices and put them at the edge of the table. Then, Assistant Professor Vyn clapped his hands, and all the devices lit up, and a slowly rotating hologram of a castle appeared in the air above the table at the center of the room.

“This is the most detailed schematics we have gathered through all these years.” Assistant Professor Vyn said to everyone in the room: “You can see there are grey spots and grey areas in the hologram, they are the areas with which we have only limited or no information about. So, avoid these areas at all cost, don’t even venture into them unless absolutely necessary.”

“There’s quite a lot of them.” Lady Marza O’Gul said with a frown on her face.

“Even if the Hellinger family is what it used to be decades ago, there wouldn’t be many that know more about the castle than us.” Assistant Professor Vyn said: “The Hellinger Castle was not meant to be familiar for every member. In fact, we used to have three elders, who are the three elected members of the three main branches of the family. These three elders would have total control over one part of the castle, and only the Patriarch or Matriarch of the family would have control over the entire castle.”

“My brother and I were in different branches, even though we have the same parents.” Lucias Vyn continued: “It’s what the Hellingers do - the ones that displayed affinity to magic or other types of useful talents, will be assigned to two particular branches, while the others with less than mediocre talents, or no talents, will be assigned to the biggest but weakest and most despised branch, and were raised with scarce, if any, resources and we are the civilian cash cows and bridge builders for the family. And yes, that rumor you heard about the Hellinger Family is true - we’re a family of either extreme talents, and barely useful or noticeable talents. And I, was deemed to be the lowest of the lows, an individual with absolutely no talent, well, maybe aside from the fact that I could occasionally see ghosts.”

“And yet here you are.” Lady Marza O’Gul smiled: “So, the two major parts of the castle that were lit up more than the others, that’s the area of the branches you were in?”

“Yes, precisely.” Assistant Professor Vyn said, as he paused the rotation of the hologram to highlight two major parts of the castle from top to bottom, which included one tall tower, the majority of one wide side of the castle: “And fortunate for us, we don’t need to know anything about the third area - we just need to use the two areas. The reason is each of the three parts has its cellar space, and each of the cellar spaces has a gate towards the final underground armory and artifact warehouse only accessible by the elders or the head of the family, inside which is the artifact we’re looking for, with no names but clearly documented usages. But a series of travesties befell the Hellinger family, for better or for worse, most of those who knew about it were either dead or just straight up missing.”

“And how are we getting into it?” Lady Marza O’Gul asked: “There are two routes into it, which means there will be two gates for us to break through.”

“And we will be entering the underground armory through both of the gates.” Assistant Professor Vyn said, waving his hand at the hologram and the images of two keys appeared right above the figure of the castle: “We acquired the keys a long time ago, and at least one of them will work. Don’t worry, if one of them doesn’t, there is a tunnel between the two areas so the one with the broken key would be able to find their way to the opened gate. ”

“What if neither works?”

“They will work.” Lucias Vyn said with a stern voice.

“And after entering the armory, we will be faced with the hardest gate to break through - a specifically crafted rune gate that one Hellinger, the most talented and accomplished Hellinger in the family history crafted to guard his proudest creation, the unnamed artifact.” Assistant Professor Vyn continued: “If everything went according to plan, there would be minimal challenges standing between us and the artifact.”

“Where do you foresee we will have to resort to force?” Lady Marza O’Gul asked.

“Well, obviously, one thing is that we know that Beverly Winters and Soren Lupei might be there, they could be earlier than us, they could be later. We shall know when we are close or inside the castle.” Assistant Professor Vyn answered: “As Hellingers we have a connection with the castle, and we can see more than any naked eye can when we are close. And the potential source of challenge is the guardians, I am talking about the gargoyles, sculpture beasts and clay warriors. The detection arrays underneath the castle were damaged when the family fell apart, which means that there’s a chance some of the defense mechanisms would target us as well. The other is that rumor has it that after the castle became deserted, beasts and foul creatures have taken over some parts of the castle.”

“And according to our scouts, these are the potential areas where dangerous creatures might have taken over.” Assistant Professor Vyn waved his hand again, and a few of the areas on the castle hologram lit up in red, which included parts of the patches of land on both sides of the main road to the main gate of the castle, some parts of the underground cellars, some parts of the spaces on the top of the watchtowers, and many rooms that were close to the exterior of the castle.

“What kind of beasts or creatures are we talking about?”

“The higher up places Shadow Bats, Plague Moths. The lower places, Swamp Serpents, mutated Black Widows, and various plants whose names we didn’t care to know about.” Assistant Professor Vyn sighed and said: “Most of them are territorial, so as long as we are careful, we’re okay.”