System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 268: Temptations on the Dark Path
In the moonlight, the Witcher noticed another stiff, vacant Wraith up ahead.
She stood nearly six feet tall, bent in a hunched stoop, like some decrepit old crone with one foot already in the grave.
Her skin was still black as pitch, stinking of damp earth and rotting corpses. A pair of small bony protrusions jutted from her back like vestigial wings. Her hair hung in tangles like clotted pondweed. And her claws ... those claws were even more hideous than a werewolf’s, like a row of sharpened black iron spikes.
The moment she saw the Witcher, she came at him in the same silent, rapid rush as the Wraiths before her.
“A knockoff Grave Hag?”
Roy drew Gabriel as she closed and pulled the trigger.
“Whoosh!”
Screened by the night, the bolt crossed ten yards without a sound and struck dead center. The shadow-monster had no chance to react. The arrowhead punched straight into the middle of her wart-ridden forehead, its fletching trembling.
By Roy’s reckoning, if this had been an ordinary Grave Hag, she would have let out a shriek of pain, torn the bolt free, and exposed an opening for him to exploit in close quarters.
But this black thing was built nothing like a living creature. It knew neither pain nor fatigue. No blood flowed from the wound. Her body only gave the faintest hitch, then, like a frog snapping up insects, she lashed a tongue ten yards long at the crossbowman across from her.
Fast, precise, vicious.
A black bolt of lightning cut through the air. Roy did not even have time to move. Amid the stench rushing into his face, that slimy, slick tongue smacked into the Lady of the Lake’s Sword he had raised before him as a shield.
“Slap!”
It left behind a ring of reeking, smoking slime.
The tongue was absurdly slender, yet the force within it was no trifle. That brief impact numbed the web of the Witcher’s thumb and nearly knocked the weapon from his grip. At the same time, a patch on the surface of the crossbow began to hiss with white smoke where it had been struck.
The long tongue carried a fiercely corrosive venom.
Roy moved with the nimble feet of a weasel, gliding low across the ground in several quick steps until he vanished behind a boulder at the roadside.
The last time he had seen a Grave Hag had been in Kagen village in Lower Posada, when he watched Letho and the Orin brothers gang up on one.
Back then the Witchers had enjoyed a huge advantage. They had laid an ambush, waited fresh for it to come to them, and taken the hag’s head in under two minutes.
Now, facing one alone, he finally understood how insidious the thing was. It was not especially formidable, but that tongue, appearing and disappearing without warning, was a damned nuisance.
If it had struck his body directly, it would not have punched through the Griffin armor, but that corrosive venom would still have made him pay for the mistake.
“No sense trading wounds with a puppet. Worse monsters are still ahead.”
So the Witcher loosed two more bolts at her in succession.
The first was shattered by the tongue.
The second buried itself in the Witch’s swollen belly. Roy’s figure blurred, space shuddered and rippled, and in an instant he flashed to her rear.
“Slash!”
The dark blade swept through the air, Aerondight biting into the back of the Witch’s neck.
It stuck in bone.
Filthy blood splashed everywhere.
The furious Grave Hag wailed and whipped around with a slash of her claws.
But the Witcher dipped low and slipped under her armpit with agile ease, circling to her back again. His dark-gold pupils turned crimson.
Intimidate.
The Witch froze in place, rigid as a puppet.
The dark red blade rose again, then hacked from left to right.
A bloody arc cut through the air.
The ugly, hideous head flew up and came down with a dull thud on the ground.
Its gaping maw still worked with a wet clacking sound, black teeth gnashing while that disgusting tongue lolled slack between them.
The headless body turned in place twice, then hit the earth with a heavy crash.
“Defeated Grave Hag, XP +80...”
Roy let out a breath and stepped out from behind cover.
This Grave Hag was already the fourth wave of monsters he had encountered. The second wave had been two Drowners, the third a single ghoul.
Without quite noticing it, after killing them all, his XP pool had filled. Witcher Lv. 6 (3680/3500)
But Roy did not choose to level up at once. The full recovery that came with leveling had to be kept for when it might save his life. The monsters were growing harder with each encounter. Sooner or later he might meet something he could not handle.
He glanced at the hourglass, the sand still running. Half an hour remained.
“Rotten. Simply rotten. You’re doing terribly. It took you half your time just to get here.” O’Dimm’s taunting voice was everywhere. “Just look at those sluggish reactions of yours, the way you cowered behind a rock like a frightened mouse. Hard to believe you passed a Witcher’s final trial. Your master must have pulled strings for you.”
Roy only gave a contemptuous snort and kept chasing the moon overhead, running onward.
After turning around several bends, he passed a small hill. Wild grass grew across it in chaotic tangles, and from among the blades came a woman’s voice, rich and lovely.
“Roy, come over here ... let me have a good look at you.”
The Witcher turned his head hesitantly. Reflected in his dark-gold pupils was a face he knew well, fiery red hair falling over her shoulders, blue eyes brimming with passion, lush lips soft as flower petals, lips that made a man want to taste their fragrance. A woman full of mature allure.
“Coral?” Roy lost himself for a moment.
The sorceress reclined softly against the grass, delight written across her lovely face as she beckoned to him. Beneath her pale yellow lace gown, her full curves rose and fell with breathtaking force, like a ship under full sail. From that slender waist down, her long wheat-colored legs were crossed together, her elegant toes tipped with pink polish curling playfully, dainty as works of art.
“Where have you been all this time?” the sorceress asked, gazing into the Witcher’s eyes with a trace of reproach. “Why haven’t you come to see me? Do you know how much I’ve missed you?”
“Say something. Have you tired of me already? Or shall we try something different ... remember the bathtub in the laboratory?” The sorceress’ cheeks flushed red.
Something stirred in the Witcher’s heart. At once he lowered his head and avoided her eyes.
A warm memory rose, impossible to suppress.
He would never forget those days in Vizima with Lytta Neyd, keeping trysts through a Portal, talking of mutations and of ordinary life, teasing each other, playing and laughing, simple days, happy ones.
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