System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 245: Whispers on the Green Hill
Ard Cerbin lay not far from Downwarren. At a glance it looked no more than an unremarkable little hill, wrapped in green turf.
When the five Witchers arrived, the sun had not yet fallen below the horizon. Its light cast a path of flickering radiance across the grass from far to near, making the green richer, and the poetic more poetic still.
Just like the word whisper, it might sound like lovers murmuring softly to one another, or like some unknowable, hidden, and somber murmur from the dark.
Roy stood upon the grass and listened closely. In the air he heard a faint, wavering sound, like wind moving over the turf, or insects hissing low.
“Whispers everywhere. That’s where the name Ard Cerbin comes from.”
“Roy, what exactly are we here for?” Orin asked, baffled.
“To find the Mother the Ladies of the Wood fear, and while we’re here, hunt an Offering.”
The other four Witchers listened in silence for a moment as well.
“Remember, lads? Nilfgaard had places like this too...” Kael said, searching his memory. “Back then, some famous geographer explained it, said it was due to a peculiar hourglass-like structure underground. When wind passed through it, the howling came up through openings in the ground.”
“Don’t start prattling on about geology at me.” Orin offered a wholly different view. “Roy, you need to make certain this sound isn’t just Griffin’s stomach grumbling.”
“...”
“Chee-chee...” Griffin, transformed into a chipmunk, suddenly thrust its tiny head out from Vyrt’s saddlebag, right beneath the hideous Fleder trophy. It stared wide-eyed and innocent at the lot of them, then turned toward its master, the two whiskers by its mouth twitching lively, as though asking, “Why did you summon me?”
“Easy ... not the time for mischief.” Roy flicked it once on the head with a finger, then rewarded it with a pine nut. At last it obediently withdrew into the saddlebag.
At the side, Flavius’s eyelid twitched. He had long since noticed that strange little thing that changed shape every day.
But it was Roy’s secret. Since Roy did not explain it himself, he could hardly ask.
“You don’t feel anything wrong here?” Roy rubbed his chin as he took stock of himself. “These whispers make me a little ... uncomfortable.”
Since entering Ard Cerbin, there had been a glaring negative status beside his personal condition, Frenzy. Somewhere in his heart, a vague urge to destroy had begun to stir, but his very high Willpower let him suppress the impulse easily.
The Witchers nodded, their expressions growing more serious.
They kept moving forward, and soon found an old wooden sign planted in the grass. Written across it in crimson blood were the words: Mad beasts within. Trespassers will lose face and arse alike.
Presumably the people of Downwarren had put it there to warn off passersby.
The Witchers were naturally not afraid of a few beasts. Carrying steel swords and leading their horses, they headed toward the distant rise, where, between the green crest of the hill and the golden sky, stood a giant banyan tree.
It had lived for some unknown number of centuries. Even from a distance, the Witchers could clearly make out its thick roots twisting down into the earth, and its vast parasol-like canopy, wide enough to shroud half the hill.
The nearer they drew to the great banyan, the more frequent the whispering became. Even so, though the whispering still could not shake the firm will of the men, it was not so for other living things.
A pack of maddened wolves burst from the brush and attacked from all sides.
Flavius took one great step forward, and his steel sword shot out like lightning, piercing the flank of one wild wolf with bloodshot eyes. The wounded beast did not even have time to howl before the steel sword was drawn back from its flesh, elegant and clean, not a drop of blood on it, and already thrust into the next target.
He was like a ghost, reaping lives without a sound.
Kael guarded his back, holding his breath and waiting. The instant a shadow pounced, his wrist flicked, and the blade skimmed a wolf’s belly like a dragonfly touching water, opening its gut and spilling steaming entrails.
Caught among three wolves, Orin bared his teeth in a savage grin and suddenly twisted into a turning slash. All the momentum and strength in his body ran together through the paired swords of the Viper School, knocking three wolves flying and slicing a fourth in two at the waist.
Letho crossed the paired swords of the Viper School in his hands. Steel brushed against steel, light and quick, sending sparks in all directions.
He stepped in and thrust, the point of the sword in his right hand stabbing into flesh. In the same lightning instant the left-hand blade followed, and with a heave of both arms he lifted one beast off the ground and threw it into the grass.
In the next heartbeat, he spun the paired swords, their गति so fast they left afterimages, like a meat grinder, leaving mangled blood and flesh strewn everywhere.
Zip, zip.
Roy’s hand crossbow fired in rapid succession. Amid the ceaseless twang of the string, blossoms of blood burst out among the wolf pack.
“Defeated Wolf, XP +10, Witcher Lv .6 (2700/3500).”
In the space of a few short seconds, the wolves, though they held overwhelming superiority in numbers, had already been cut down by more than half.
But the battle was far from over. Countless beasts poured out of the grass like a flood.
Wild dogs, wild boars, even gray bears.
More than a hundred. Every beast in the woods around Ard Cerbin had rushed out at once.
“Damn it. Did we kick a hornet’s nest?” Roy traced Igni with his left hand and burned a vulture leaping down from the air, then cast Intimidate, freezing the ring of wolves around him in place. He spun his blade and dropped a circle of corpses with clean efficiency.
Then, nimble as a cat, he turned and leapt onto the back of the brown horse.
Vyrt let out a long shriek, reared up, and kicked one growling, foam-flecked wolf flying with a single hoof.
“Don’t get bogged down in it. Run for the hill!”
The Orin brothers and Letho each cast three Aard Signs in succession, throwing the beasts around them flying and clearing space all at once.
“Griffin, mount up.” Orin shouted. The Witcher of the Cat School was still locked in with a strong bear, his supple Sword Dance carving it until blood streamed from it. But the massive brute seemed not to feel pain or fatigue. Its oppressive bulk still kept hurling itself at Flavius.
More beasts were swarming in fast.
Flavius hesitated no longer. He followed the others onto his horse and used Axii to steady it as he rode hard toward the hill.
...
In the glow of the setting sun, five knights fled madly, with a black tide of beasts streaming behind them, like a migrating herd across the steppe, kicking up great clouds of grass and dirt.
Yet the instant they rode onto Ard Cerbin, the beasts came to a halt, as though blocked by an invisible wall. They prowled and growled outside the hill, but did not dare advance a step.
They waited a long while. Seeing no Witchers come out again, they could only slowly disperse.
“What in hell is this?” Orin’s expression mixed astonishment with excitement. Having just been chased all across the grass by maddened animals, he found it even more thrilling than close combat.
“Isn’t it obvious...” Kael retied his headband firmly. “They’re afraid. There’s something in this hill that terrifies wild beasts.”
“A thing that frightens beasts...” Roy let out a rough breath. Of the five of them, his stamina was the poorest.
He emphasized the point again.
“We weren’t wrong to come here. Beneath Ard Cerbin, the soul of the Mother, creator of the Ladies of the Wood, must be sealed. A legendary Mother with the power to cow wild beasts, that would hardly be strange.”
“So those strange whispers are hers as well?” Kael asked.
“Be patient. We’ll have our answer soon enough.”
“When we meet this ‘Mother,’ do you have a plan?” Flavius’s apprentice was still missing, and the gray-green eyes were full of anxiety. “If her three daughters are that diseased, she herself can’t be anything good.”
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