System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 238
In the northern outskirts, farmland stretched everywhere, planted with turnips, carrots, peppers, and other crops, along with low shrubs and grasses.
Down the middle ran a broad main road that stretched northward from Vizima until it vanished from sight.
The road was full of wheel tracks. Every day carriages passed this way, north and south, some bound for Novigrad, others westward toward the unpeopled lands and Gors Velen.
But the Witchers had no intention of following that road like ordinary men. According to plan, not long after leaving Vizima, they turned their horses and rode out into the boundless wilderness.
The wilds were treacherous and full of danger, but rich in resources.
It was already early October, autumn proper, and the season when wild beasts were most active. As the Witchers rode across the open lands, foxes, roe deer, and elk would often burst out from the nearby grass, shrubs, or behind rocks, wandering about as boldly as they pleased.
Roy even spotted an entire family of wild boars, a fat sow and boar, with a string of little striped piglets behind them, snuffling and rooting through the grass.
After a heated discussion within the Viper School, the Witchers spared them and chose not to break apart such a neat little family.
By the time evening came, the Witchers split into two groups. Roy took Griffin out hunting, while the other three picked out a temporary campsite in an open patch behind a boulder and raised a fire.
When the moon hung high in the sky, a rich meat smell rose with the curling smoke. The youngest Witcher held a soft brush in one hand, brushing spices and honey over a gutted and cleaned deer stretched across the spit, while the other hand kept turning the spit.
He worked until the meat turned golden, crisp, tender, and rich with juice.
...
The four Witchers of the Viper School sat around the fire, drinking Dwarven Spirit and cider taken from storage space, and eating until grease shone around their mouths. One whole grown forest deer was reduced to a bare skeleton.
“Kid, if you ever stop doing this work, you could go be a cook in some big city tavern.” Letho sucked his fingers with lingering pleasure. “You’d make good coin.”
“Burp ... what say we roast a buffalo tomorrow?” Kael rubbed his round full belly, picked his teeth with the little finger of his left hand, and began planning the next few meals. “The day after that, rabbit, and after that...”
...
“I’ve had enough of you lot. I’m a Witcher, not your servant.” Roy indignantly stuffed a chunk of roast meat into the mouth of Griffin, who was yapping away like a black dog. It had already eaten two rabbits and still wanted more.
“Roy, you should feel honored. Preparing food for your elders is a glorious tradition of the Viper School.” Orin sprang to his feet and crooked a finger at the young man, flashing white teeth. “Well fed and well drunk, now it’s time for a little exercise. Come and spar with me.”
...
After the spar, the Witchers soothed their horses with Axii, then scattered a ring of dried Forktail dung around the camp to ward off trouble in the night.
One Witcher always kept watch, for the wilds held not only beasts, but troublesome things like Endrega workers, basilisks, and Kikimores.
Roy, however, was not counted among those standing watch.
He would sit by the campfire and listen to Letho and the Orin brothers boasting at length, about journeys through the perilous lands of the far south, and tales of fighting monsters and surviving by the narrowest margin.
But most of all, they shared XP, freely and without reserve, passing on what they had learned about combat, potion brewing, and monster identification.
There were also endless sparring bouts, sharpening battle instinct.
And Griffin’s training.
Now and then, deep in the quiet of night, Roy would slip away from camp and take the Spyglass out of storage space, chatting with the sorceress far away in Kerack.
A week passed uneventfully. Aside from encountering a gray bear, they met no special danger.
Then, on this overcast day, the four of them noticed something wrong.
The sky was covered in clumps of dark, dirty cloud like stained wool. The sunlight was completely smothered, and the air felt oppressive to the point of suffocation.
A chill wind swept howling across the wide wilderness, bending shrubs and grass. The chirring of insects died away one after another.
The Witchers, moving slowly with reins in hand, turned their eyes toward a place not far off. There, dimly visible, was a narrow path winding between fences. At the end of it stood a row of crude buildings, a small village.
“Do you smell it?” Letho’s nose twitched. Beneath the scent of earth, plants, and animal musk there lingered something else.
The Witchers stood still and tested the air carefully. Their faces grew grave. A faint smell of blood was coming from the village, not only animal blood, but human blood mixed in with it.
“Stay sharp...”
The Witchers tethered their horses to a crooked-necked tree nearby, then, using the tall, dense elephant grass for cover, crept to the edge of the village and crouched behind a hut made of wood, tamped earth, and thatch, listening for a while.
They heard only the silence of death. Not merely human voices, but even the sounds of livestock, breathing, and heartbeats were utterly absent.
The more unnatural it seemed, the more cautious the Witchers became. Light on their feet, they climbed up onto the hut’s roof and crouched by the eaves like cats, looking down over the whole village.
In their field of view stood several dozen old thatch-and-wood houses. Most were dwellings, though there was also a larger tavern, and a smithy with a grindstone out in the yard.
But there was no one.
Had it been an abandoned village, that alone would have explained something. Yet on the muddy track through the middle of the village there were still clear tracks, jumbled footprints, wagon ruts, hoofprints. All of it reminded the Witchers that not long ago, people had still been alive here.
“What happened here?”
The Witchers dropped down from the roof and split up, following the scent of blood through the village. Soon they began turning up scattered signs, traces of violent struggle, dried blood, and the bodies of household fowl and livestock.
“We can rule out ghouls...”
Roy pulled an arrow from the wooden fence of a livestock pen. The arrowhead was wrought from pig iron, crude and primitive in workmanship, with rough burrs still left on it.
Plainly, the smith who made it had no great skill.
Then the Witcher looked toward the deepest corner of the pen, and his dark-gold pupils narrowed to a point. Beneath a heap of withered straw lay a corpse.
The Witcher walked in.
The dead girl was young, fifteen or sixteen at most, with fine features and fair skin. In the countryside, she would have been the sort many young men chased eagerly.
But her bright life had ended before it had even begun.
Roy quickly confirmed she had been strangled, and worse had been done to her before death.
Plainly, there had been more than one culprit.
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