A Dark Turn

I started off today grinding at the castle on the mountain, but this time there was a new NPC. He said he wanted the sword I found earlier since it belonged to his father, but since he seemd rather shady I refused and then he challenged me to a duel. I won but apparently that wasn't the right coarse of action since now that word had a dark tendency, making all the monsters stronger...

I struggled to get back to the narrow stair, but that beam shooting ghost still kills me, and then I had to make the trip again to retrive the 56k of souls I dropped. I then decided to try my luck at that giant arrow shooting statue in the prison. Turns out that all you need to do is crisscross between safe points all the way up the hall, then turn the thing off. Then I came across the real boss of the area, a 4 armed female humanoid demon, who wasn't that hard to kill but the real trick is finding and killing the guy who keeps summoning her after she dies. After my mistake in killing that other NPC, I was really hesitant in killing this one, but it was the only way forwards and there was not negative effects from doing it.

So I have one more area open to explore tomorrow.