System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 154
The inn, a room on the second floor.
In the cramped room, a clear, ringing whinny suddenly cut through the air, and the lovers tangled together froze mid-motion.
The man stiffened and turned his head, only to find that at some unknown moment a massive brown horse’s head had appeared beside the bed. Its copper-bell eyes, black as gemstones, stared straight at him with an unsettling, almost human curiosity.
“Hrhh...”
It whinnied again, then pulled its lips back, baring a row of large white teeth, and huffed at the man with a snorting breath that sent the brown hair at his temple fluttering aside.
The stunned man locked eyes with it, the two staring at each other for a few heartbeats. Then he jolted and rubbed his eyes hard.
“Baby ... am I seeing things, or have I gone mad?”
“Darling? There’s a horse in the inn room? This has to be a dream.”
“Aaah!” the woman suddenly screamed and dove back under the covers. From behind the horse, two unfamiliar men abruptly stepped into view. The younger one gave an awkward smile. “Sorry for interrupting your good time. We’ll leave at once. Please, carry on.”
The man under the covers caught sight of Letho’s prehistoric-beast-like build and was instantly struck with terror.
“It’s over. What if I can’t get it up anymore?” He could already see the bleak rest of his life unfolding.
“Bastards! This is all your fault! Who are you, where did you come from?”
His eyes flicked to the newcomers’ eerie pupils and the longswords on their backs, and his voice shrank to a mosquito’s whine. “Why ... why ... why did you come into our room of all places? And these two horses ... what is going on?”
“Well...” Roy rubbed his temples in distress. “That’s a lot of questions. Why don’t you just keep going...”
“Keep going? Do you really think I’m still in the mood?!”
The man’s roar cut off abruptly. The woman went slack as well. In their four pupils, two green inverted triangles surfaced at the same time.
“Remember,” the Witcher said, fingers deftly tracing Signs in the air, a crooked grin tugging at his lips. “You are still drunk on love. You have forgotten everything that happened in the last ten minutes. You will continue your ‘labors’ next, for two hours.”
“Hm?” Letho, maintaining the Signs in his hands, shot him a reproachful look.
“All right, fine, one hour then. A man can’t be done in under an hour.”
...
“Hah...”
The Witcher wiped away sweat that did not exist and, under a pile of astonished stares in the inn, led a horse each out onto the street.
“Kid, handing your blood over to some foreign Sorcerer for research, you’re not afraid he’ll curse you and make your life worse than death?”
“Relax. Azar Javed doesn’t look like a good man, and I’m not stupid enough to give him my own blood.” Roy gave Letho a reassuring look. With a personal space to work with, swapping things was far too easy. “We’ve killed plenty of Monsters along the way. I’ve got no shortage of blood samples.”
“I didn’t lie. It still counts as my blood, blood I carry on me.”
What kind of results could a Sorcerer possibly get by studying monster blood as Witcher blood? Roy found himself looking forward to it.
...
The streets of Cintra were remarkably broad, the hard blue-stone paving more than twice as wide as Vizima’s. The surrounding buildings were clean and imposing. Their walls were built of heavily textured stone, tall and thick, and the windows bore no superfluous ornamentation.
A crisp sea wind, tinged with salt, blew in from the west. The clothes and bearing of the people in the streets were utterly different from those of the inland folk.
Cintra lay by the sea and maintained a strong alliance with the Skellige Isles. Its people had inevitably taken on some of the islanders’ ferocity. Everywhere were men with headscarves and sleeveless tunics, thick arms bare, faces roughened and reddened by the sea wind.
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