System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 243
Poor villages, rude country folk, and desolate marshes, that was all most people of Temeria ever thought of when they heard the name Velen.
And now the Witchers stood in those very marshes of Velen.
“Anything that dares lay hands on my apprentice, I swear I’ll make it pay dearly.” Griffin’s roar was still echoing over the swamp as he walked in the middle of the group, one hand gripping the boy Karl’s, while he and his companions tracked the remnants of blood in the air, the owner of that ear.
Letho led the way with his Viper silver sword testing the ground before him, while the Orin brothers behind kept a wary eye to left and right.
A marsh wrapped in mist had never been a peaceful place. Ghouls, Drowners, Swamp Hags, and other carrion-feeders prowled here for food. One careless step from an outsider, and he would end up as monster dung.
Beyond that, they also had to beware the treacherous ground, the sticky mire that devoured men’s lives, more fearsome in its way than monsters, because it was everywhere.
Roy brought up the rear. Each step he took, his Griffin greaves sank slightly into the wet, yielding black mud, which hampered his movement a little.
He glanced up. Day had fully broken.
The first rays of morning had appeared, and with the rising temperature, the vapors began to lift, draping a soft veil over the perilous swamp.
The Witchers’ sight reached no farther than twenty yards. As far as the eye could see, the black mud was covered in weeds, littered with murky pools, with the occasional crooked tree jutting from the water. Now and then they also glimpsed the rotted, disfigured carcasses of animals sunk in the swamp.
From within one of the corpses came harsh croaking, and then several sleek black crows burst out, beating their wings as they swept across the air.
A breeze stirred.
Ripples spread over the murky swamp water, as though something below were about to break the surface.
“Teacher ... I’m scared...” Karl’s little face had gone white. His eyes flickered as he pressed himself close against Flavius’s strong arm.
“Little Monkey, what did I tell you before?” Flavius squeezed the boy’s hand hard and cast his gaze into the depths of the marsh. “The monsters in swamps all share one trait, they love the blood and hearts of cowards most. The more frightened you are, the faster you die.”
Karl shuddered, lifted his neck stubbornly, his face flushing red. “I ... I’m not afraid anymore...”
“Good.” Flavius gave a cold grin. “But rest easy. Whatever dares touch you, my sword won’t let it enjoy itself.”
“Lads, what’s that?”
Letho at the front suddenly called the others to a halt and pointed toward something not far away, a piece of rotting driftwood floating on the swamp water, thick with moss.
Everyone turned their eyes that way.
At first glance the wood was unremarkable, but on closer look, in the hollow on the top of the trunk, there was something growing there, a spiral thing like a fungus.
“An ear?”
“That’s right, a human ear. It’s been there a long time, gone moldy and rotten.”
The Witchers fell silent. All of them had the vague feeling that such a strange arrangement held some special meaning.
“Ears in the Velen marsh ... Whispess?” Roy rubbed at his brow as he thought.
“What are you muttering about, kid?”
“I was reminded of a story told in the Velen marshes.”
“From some book again, or from one of your ‘feelings’? Let’s hear it.”
“It concerns several ancient beings said to dwell in Velen...” Roy had only just begun when he was forced to stop.
From the mist and miasma ahead there suddenly came singing, an eerie tune with words of uncertain meaning.
Everyone’s attention was caught. One by one they pricked up their ears and moved carefully closer.
“Three sisters, hand in hand, across sea and land, a terror to men, thus they go: three for thee, three for me, and thrice again, nine in all...”
Before a simple thatched hut, and two little plots neatly planted with parsley and cattails, a middle-aged man was singing away in utter abandon. Though his pitch was dreadful and made everyone listening knit their brows, his courage and lungs were both surprisingly strong.
He looked about forty, his face carved with the deep furrows left by a hard life. He wore rough linen clothes, no different from any peasant in the countryside. But he seemed injured. The right side of his face was wrapped in white bandages speckled with blood.
He was so lost in his singing that he barely seemed aware of himself. As he sang, he ladled a golden liquid over the fields, and never noticed the Witchers stealing up beside him.
Only when someone tapped his shoulder did he start violently, his wrist jerking so that the clear oily liquid in the ladle splashed onto the ground. At once his face twisted with pained regret.
“Who are you? Sneaking up like rats, just to scare me?” the man barked viciously, clearly not pleased to see them.
“Sorry, friend. We’re Witchers passing this way by chance, and we’d like to ask you a few questions.” Flavius pushed past the others to the front, and only then did he notice that the man not only had the right half of his face in bandages, but was also missing the ear on the left side of his head. Half his hair was gone too, like some great patch of baldness, leaving one side of his skull naked and shining, while the other still bore thick brown hair.
His eyebrows had also been shaved off, and one leg had been replaced with a wooden thing like a table leg. Taken together, he looked grotesque and absurd.
The four Witchers fixed their attention on the stranger, while Roy’s eyes lingered on the two little fields. The crops there were thriving wildly, promising a rich harvest. Then he glanced at the bucket by the man’s feet. The golden liquid inside carried a scent of oak. It was certainly no ordinary fertilizer, more like oil pressed from acorns.
“What did you say?” the man shouted at the Witchers. “I can’t hear you!”
With one ear cut away, his hearing had evidently suffered with it.
Flavius had no choice but to lean up to the man’s ear and repeat himself.
When the man had heard him out, he waved them off impatiently. “Witchers, I don’t know why you’ve come to a backwater like this. I’ve got no contract for you, and no money to pay you.” He pointed west, nearly shooing them away. “Try your luck in Crookback Bog and Downwarren.”
“Then let me speak plainly.” Flavius’s patience with peasants had come to an end. He pulled a jeweled, exquisitely made dagger from his belt and showed it to the man. “Do you recognize this?”
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