System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 109
When Roy came round on the operating table, yesterday’s fatigue and the bruising on his skin had vanished; his body felt renewed, his energy overflowing.
“Child, you must thank your teacher.” Nenneke smiled as she handed over a bowl of foul-smelling, sticky, pitch-dark porridge-like gruel.
“Drink this medicinal broth down, not a drop left.”
The boy took the bowl and downed it without a word. He had seen mountains of corpses and seas of blood, yet the foul, fishy reek of the broth failed even to make him wince.
“Thank Letho? What did that oaf do to me while I slept?”
“Don’t let his crude looks fool you, he’s attentive. After you collapsed he massaged you for more than two hours to restore the circulation. Otherwise, even with all your vigor you could not have erased muscle fatigue in a single night.”
“That fellow...” Roy pressed his wrist. He remembered a thick ring of bruising from yesterday, but now only a faint, nearly vanished trace remained; the blisters and redness on his palms had likewise eased.
The Viper School’s traditional massage, he’d experienced it before; it still worked.
...
The same routine followed: the sorceress’s daily physical, recording vitals, and the infusion of hormones.
After that the boy, as if full of gooseblood, went to the training ground, while the Witcher waited there, face like flint and sword in hand.
“Another busy, useful day...”
But this time the training drew a different kind of attention; in the previous two days the temple girls had not noticed anything amiss.
Today, however, several apprentices in gray gowns, barely into their teens, slipped nearby to peer curiously at the flushed young man.
Under the sun the shaven-headed Letho pointed with his knotted forearms, and the boy moved like a marionette beneath those hands, mechanically repeating the same two sword motions: first a cut, then a thrust—dull and monotonous.
“Boring! Back and forth with the same two moves, I’d rather watch acrobatics!” A plaited girl with babyish cheeks had watched long enough and puckered her lips. “Who are they, what business have they to be waving swords in the temple?”
“I reckon they’re White Rose Knights...” A small, bright-eyed girl said earnestly, “Mother Nenneke only allows Knights to draw weapons here.”
“Second that. Wasn’t there a squad of White Rose Knights here on the 27th last month?” A ponytailed girl with a pointed chin recalled with admiration. “They were drilling in the yard ... to frighten off ill-minded folk and protect the sisters of the temple!”
“White Rose Knights don’t protect the temple ... Mother Nenneke would rather spend the money on helping the poor than hire those leeches!” A tall girl leading two silent, doll-like children stepped forward to retort, “Last time the Knights came, it was only to escort Ellander’s princess.”
The tall girl spoke with conviction.
“As for those two, they weren’t wearing the Knights’ polished plate, nor bore the White Rose crest on their chests ... look at their eyes; that bald one’s surely a Witcher, the young one perhaps an apprentice.”
“Oh—Witcher ... not as proper and noble as a Knight ... but they’re pitiful folk, no wonder Mother Nenneke took them in.”
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