System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 271: A Toast to the Demon Slayer
Some time later, north of La Valette Barony, at the Cat’s Tail Tavern.
“A cup of cider!” The black-haired young Witcher pushed open the tavern door in a rush, strode to a round table by the counter, snapped his fingers at the buxom barmaid, then dropped into the seat beside the bald, hulking man who had long been waiting there. He snatched away the fragrant stew in front of him and began wolfing it down.
“Kid, don’t just eat. Tell us how the cleanup at the castle went.” Letho helplessly took a swig of Dwarven Spirit. The other three Witchers at the table, and the skinny boy beside them, all looked over with curiosity in their eyes.
“To save little Aryan, I nearly put my own life on the line. No one gets to wriggle out of that debt, not even Baron La Valette.” Roy winked at them, swallowed a fist-sized chunk of beef brisket whole, and tossed a money pouch onto the table.
“The reward is here, not a coin missing.”
Amid the crisp clinking of crowns, the hooded Witcher in the dusty-gray cloak beside him lit up at once. He hastily opened the pouch and counted through it, only for his face to darken soon after.
“One hundred orens? This is the lifelong fortune the great Baron La Valette promised? He’s tossing coins at us like beggars?”
“Of course it’s far more than that. Baron La Valette has a foul temper and looks down on commoners, but his generosity is not inferior to Foltest’s. After all, I saved his eldest son.” Roy chewed the beef in great mouthfuls and bared his teeth in a grin. Take a man’s coin, solve his trouble. He accepted the money with a clear conscience.
In truth, over the past few months, after solving problems one after another for Baron Verrieres, King Foltest, and Baron La Valette, he had accumulated a rather handsome fortune. Even after deducting the vast expense of forging School gear in Vizima, he still had nearly two thousand orens.
“That pouch is for your drinking money. The remaining nine hundred orens will be kept by me, according to the old rules. Once we reach Novigrad,” Roy said with yearning, “those savings will be put to great use.”
Letho listened thoughtfully.
Orin gave an exaggerated sigh, a faint grievance flashing through his amber pupils.
Bargaining with the man who kept the accounts might leave him without even that drinking money. He quickly clutched the pouch to his chest like a treasure and muttered, “Roy, this meal is on you.”
“Orin, have you fallen into a coin purse?” Kael glared at his brother in dissatisfaction, snatched the money pouch from his hand, and tucked it safely against himself.
Then he turned to the young Witcher. “Kid, I need an explanation. You vanished from the castle for no reason for an hour, and when you appeared again, Aryan La Valette woke almost at the same time. What exactly happened during that hour?”
“Kid, if you still count us as your own,” Letho said with his cold, poker-stiff face, wiping the wine from the corner of his mouth, “don’t hide everything in your gut.”
Roy pressed his lips together.
“If you’re worried about dragging the two of us into trouble, there’s no need.” Flavius, the Cat School Witcher, removed his dark glasses. His gray-green pupils glanced at Roy. “My sword is enough to protect Karl.” He stroked the boy’s head beside him. “And I still owe you a heavy debt.”
“Owing a debt too long slows the sword arm.”
“Fine.” Roy felt helpless, and a little warmed. “I’ll tell you everything. But don’t worry, the danger has passed.” The magic lamp overhead shook loose motes of hazy light, the bard’s lute plucked a slow, melodious tune, and the Witcher began to tell a strange and winding tale.
“During the time I vanished, I was pulled into a game by a mysterious man named Gaunter O’Dimm. My first crossing with him began in Aldersberg...”
The Witcher gave them a rough account of his grudge and entanglement with Master Mirror.
Aside from concealing the level-up and the part where he severed his wrist to bleed himself, and downplaying the dangerous fight, he told everything else as it had happened.
He had thought it through as well. Gaunter O’Dimm had lost this round. He could no longer reach his claws toward those around Roy, so there was no need to hide it.
...
“With less than thirty seconds left, I shattered the wall with Aard, released the water, and used the reflection on the surface to catch Master Mirror by luck. I beat him.” Roy spoke slowly, a trace of lingering fear on his face.
This wager, a lesson written in blood, taught him that events could change in an instant. He could not rely too much on what he knew and act rashly.
“According to the contract, the threat is gone. From now on, we no longer have to worry about Master Mirror.”
As for Lady Luisa, the Witcher had given her a different explanation, that an invisible Devil Hym had been at work inside the dream.
After hearing the tale, Letho, the Orin brothers, Flavius, and his apprentice all fell silent.
Strange light flickered in their eyes. Karl’s mouth hung open in astonishment, as if he had just heard a bedtime tale about a knight slaying a dragon.
Master Mirror was the dragon, and his senior, Roy of the Viper School, was the knight who slew the dragon and saved mankind.
“Kid, you sure you weren’t dreaming?”
“Maybe. Maybe some powerful being made a dream and invited me in for a proper game, and I saved Aryan along the way.” Roy glanced at the faint red ancient symbol on his right wrist. It looked like two twisted semicircles pressed into a knot of thread, strange to the eye.
It was a mark, and an amulet. It would last ten years.
“Don’t talk nonsense about dreams.” Orin rubbed his chin, thinking over what he had just heard. “A thing that grants any human wish, takes souls as payment, freezes time with a wave of its hand, and can cross worlds ... even the gods of legend are no more than that, are they?”
“Not necessarily a god.” Kael offered another possibility, looking the black-haired Witcher up and down. “I’ve heard similar legends somewhere. That thing may be like most of the Monsters now living, a Relict that invaded our world through the Conjunction of the Spheres. It possesses all manner of powerful abilities beyond reason.”
His bent index finger tapped the hard muscle of his younger brother’s chest. Kael frowned in puzzlement. “You wagered with a transcendent being like that and came out whole? Even your rib injury healed, didn’t it? What did you rely on, swordsmanship no one can beat?”
“This, of course.” Roy took a sip of cider, tapped his temple, and joked with deliberate ease. “Besides, cats are favored by Chaotic Energy and have nine lives. I have two. Ask Letho if you don’t believe me.”
“You were just lucky enough to survive.”
The bald Letho immediately poured cold water over him.
After leaving La Valette Castle, he had felt a strange exhaustion. Thinking back now, it was clearly the aftereffect of Master Mirror’s magic.
The feeling of having one’s life entirely in another’s grip, while knowing nothing of it, was something even despair seemed too weak to describe.
“Speaking its name and discussing it may draw that thing’s attention. For safety,” Letho said gravely, “from this day onward, no one is to mention its name.”
As his words fell, the mood at the table grew heavy.
Several pairs of beastlike pupils turned slowly. The Witchers all realized the unimaginable danger hidden within the matter, and sank into thought.
“Come on, lads, don’t all wear funeral faces. Ruins the mood. Have we met too few dangers already? Who cares what kind of being it is, or how strong it may be?” Orin broke the silence and raised his cup toward the Viper School’s young brother. “Roy won one round, and he lived. Isn’t that worth celebrating?”
“Shouldn’t we drink to the victor?”
The others breathed out, shed their grim expressions, and raised their cups.
“And me!” Karl stood on tiptoe excitedly and lifted a cup filled with blueberry juice.
“Meow.” Griffin, the black cat, poked out of the hood and meowed, nose twitching.
Six cups and one paw tapped together. Bright liquor splashed, the fragrance of wine and fruit scattered through the air, and the oppression in everyone’s chest vanished.
“The castle matter ends here,” Letho said after a moment. “Aryan is awake now. Lady Luisa should honor her promise, release the members of The Sea Scorpion’s Enigma, and compensate them.”
“It’s being handled.” Roy explained, “There should be news by tomorrow afternoon. We won’t stay many more days before setting out. My injuries are healed, so there’s no need to delay any longer.”
He was also curious how the baron and Luisa, those lofty nobles, would compensate the commoners they had wronged.
Because of selfishness and stupidity, the rebuilt Sea Scorpion’s Enigma had been torn apart, and had forever lost two of its members: Corin the Fire Breather, and Amos the Gwent entertainer.
How should that debt be settled?
Coldness flashed through the dark-gold pupils. Perhaps he would still have to act.
...
After the small gathering in the tavern, four Witchers led by Flavius escorted the boy Karl away.
How bored could Witchers be? Especially old men like Letho and the Orin brothers, already past fifty. Training an apprentice was tremendous amusement for them.
So they volunteered eagerly to help the novice mentor, the Cat School Witcher Flavius, train his apprentice.
For this stretch of time, four burly men had been taking turns drilling the skinny boy.
The old Roy, too, had once undergone those brutal, sunless, inhuman drills under Letho’s pressure, squeezing every shred of potential out of his body.
That torment, that sour delight, remained vivid in his memory. But after a year of training, the young Witcher’s foundation was now fairly solid. In some respects, he could even stand on his own.
The three Viper School veterans had practically begun letting him range free. Most of the time, he went to them for advice on his own initiative.
Now, the hardships he had endured were being doubled and poured onto Karl. The skinny boy had to face four life tutors. What miserable state would that be?
Roy could not help holding three minutes of silence for Karl, secretly laughing as he came to the stable behind the tavern. He added some peas for the brown horse Vyrt, patted its glossy mane, then pulled the black cat Griffin from his hood, who had licked a few drops of liquor and begun swaying his head and meowing, and gave him a thorough petting in his arms.
Though he had neglected their feelings somewhat lately, the two little fellows had been utterly loyal to the Witcher from beginning to end.
They did not need much company, yet they always answered him with simple, affectionate goodwill.
After playing with his two small companions for a while, Roy sat on the haystack in the stable, took out his leather notebook, and began recording every detail of the journey through the barony: the whole case from beginning to end, oversights during the investigation, the advantages and disadvantages of his choices, mistakes made in the fights against the Wraiths in the maze, and a fuller profile of Gaunter O’Dimm.
“October 23, 1261, La Valette Barony. Aryan discovered Luisa’s affair with King Foltest and, under heavy emotional shock, fell into Master Mirror’s trap, sinking into a beautiful dream ... Gaunter O’Dimm, suspected...”
“Demon? God?”
“Nearly omnipotent...”
“In the matter of ‘harvesting souls,’ strictly bound by contracts ... In other respects, however, he has a certain freedom of action ... for example, killing someone on a whim...”
He classified the creature under Relicts, ranking its strength above the rulers of Higher Vampires, above even the Unseen Elder.