The paladin did not approach the fugitive, but threw a dagger at him. Rudolf saw the moment of the throw, but did not even try to dodge. The dagger's reflex, built up over decades, had kicked in before his body did, and the piece of steel flying straight at his head should have bounced off the magical barrier the mage had created. Instead, the dagger scraped his skull, leaving a deep gash on his head. Screaming to himself, Rudolph remembered the artifact in his pocket and touched his wounded head. The edges of the wound were healing. He could ignore it for the moment.
Grabbing a meat cleaver from the table, the ghoul thrust it into the skull of the nearest guard without a second thought. The blow was too strong and the chef's tool, turned into a weapon, went too deep into the man's body. He had to leave it there and dodge a stabbing blow with a pike to the stomach, too slow even against a human opponent.
Rudolph simply pushed the body aside and let the spearhead slip past him, then took hold of the shaft and yanked it toward him. The Guardsman, who had not thought to let go of his weapon that suddenly pulled him, found himself a couple of centimeters away from the former Master and his throat was simply ripped out. Rudolph deftly turned his pike a hundred and eighty degrees and tried to thrust it into the approaching paladin, but the latter managed to step back and out of the weapon's reach.
There was a forced pause in the fast-moving battle. The paladin and the two guardsmen behind him were blocking the exit to the street and no longer sought to attack, realizing that reinforcements would soon arrive and the fugitive's chances of escape would drop to zero. The ghoul, clutching his useless pike, had no idea what to do next.
He had crossed his own plans with his own hands by jumping into the shaft of the kitchen elevator. The situation was resolved by a noise coming from the shaft. Apparently, someone decided to repeat the route of the fugitive vampire and jumped into the shaft.
Rudolph went back to the mine and was just in time when the pursuer's feet touched the bottom. Grabbing the man by the boot, the ghoul yanked him towards himself and thus made his pursuer fall on his tailbone. Whereupon the paladin received the point of a pike in the stomach. The weapon pierced the warrior through and even entered the wall of the mine behind his back.
Having blocked the mine for a while, Rudolph took the sword of the defeated pursuer and turned to the paladin at the entrance. He made no attempt to stop the ghoul from doing what he had done and now looked at Rudolf calmly, even mockingly.
- Surrender, Master. You can't get away. It's all useless.
Instead of answering, the fugitive attacked the paladin. The swords crossed several times before the guardsmen decided to help and tried to intervene in the fight as well. It was at this point that the paladin realized he couldn't use his personal magic and tried to sharply break the distance with his opponent, bumping his back against his aide from the guards. This unfortunate misunderstanding was enough to leave only one living opponent in the kitchen a second later, but he didn't live long.
Rudolph took his time and bent over the corpses to drink the blood, then leisurely walked out into the courtyard of the royal palace. He was immediately spotted, the soldiers guarding the courtyard moved towards him, and the magician released a "fireball", which dissolved without a trace as soon as the spell approached the ghoul. "The King's Stone did not malfunction.
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