System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 274: The Road to the Golden Sea
The night lay cold and clear.
Outside the Witcher’s hut.
Moonlight washed over the blade, silver and hard, while two figures moved without a sound, circling, testing, striking.
Veins stood out along both hands as they gripped the Gwyhyr. Roy held the sword angled at his waist, like a plow biting into soil, the tip leveled at the hooded Witcher’s throat. His feet rooted in a steady T-stance, posture locked in Ochs, he drifted sideways with measured control.
Orin bent slightly at the waist. His left hand held the blade forward, tip aimed at his opponent’s eyes; his right reversed the grip, drawing the edge inward. His steps were light, toes barely touching the ground as he followed Roy’s rhythm.
“Bang, bang, bang!”
They crashed together.
A storm of rapid strikes, too fast for the eye to follow.
Sparks cascaded like a waterfall. Steel flashed in the moonlight, ringing again and again, dozens of collisions in the span of a breath.
Then they broke apart.
They faced each other once more across the space.
The Gwyhyr rose from Roy’s hip to the side of his face, like a bull lowering its horns, shifting with his steps, always aligned with the target, ready to charge.
But the hand that held it trembled.
Too much exertion. Roy’s chest heaved, sweat steamed from his body, soaking his collar and hair.
A bead of sweat slid down from his chin.
Drip.
Across from him, the hooded Witcher drew a rough breath, then suddenly let both swords drop, bracing himself on their hilts like a pair of canes. The easy grin he usually wore had vanished. The exchange had shattered his Quen Sign; a lock of hair at his temple was gone.
“The old makes way for the new. So the day finally comes ... Witcher Roy, from this moment on, the title of Viper School swordsmanship champion belongs to you.” Orin tilted his head, narrowed his amber eyes. His expression held a trace of regret, and something sly beneath it. His steel sword tapped the air three times, as if an emperor knighting a warrior.
“What are you even doing?” the Viper School apprentice rolled his eyes, spun a neat flourish, then sheathed his blade. He sounded half amused, half irritated. “I’ve lost to you ten thousand times. Winning once by luck, what’s there to celebrate?”
“You don’t understand. I, an eighty-year-old Witcher, actually lost focus in a fight. First time in thirty years. It’s a disgrace.” Orin pulled his hood down, hiding the embarrassment and shame on his face. “If Kael hears about this, he’ll laugh himself sick.”
“Relax, I’ll keep it quiet.” Roy’s lips curved faintly as he suppressed a smile. Then he probed, “Still, your state just now ... you lost focus?”
“No idea what’s wrong tonight. My eyes blurred, maybe floaters? Kept seeing some damn red wraiths. Ruined my flawless swordsmanship ... barely swung a few times before my muscles started aching.” Orin rubbed his sore arm, his face turning grave as he muttered to himself. “Drank too much with that Griffin this afternoon, maybe?”
“Red wraiths. Tell me properly.” Something stirred in Roy’s mind.
“Long, trailing things,” the hooded Witcher spread his hands, moving them in a slow, undulating rhythm, mimicking something swimming through water. “Like octopus tentacles. Blood red. They kept flickering behind you, along your longsword ... damned if I know what they were. Every time I saw them, bad memories flooded up, couldn’t stop it.”
As he spoke, those amber eyes shifted, suspicious, toward Roy’s dark-gold pupils.
“What are you staring at me for?”
“That phenomenon ... could it be whatever’s in that castle is still clinging to you?”
“No chance. You’re just not sober yet.”
Roy brushed it off with a single line.
Red tentacles? So that was how others saw the so-called Willpower of slaughter.
But why tentacles? I’m not some damned evil god.
The thought sat strangely in his mind. He let it go for now, turning instead to the memory of the spar.
Compared to Intimidate, a mass hold every four minutes, suppression was constant, but far gentler in effect.
Within ten minutes, it barely did anything. But once the fight dragged past that mark, something began to shift.
Using Orin as reference, the signs were clear. Faster exhaustion, sweat pouring, heart racing, focus slipping.
At twenty minutes, quantity became quality. Orin’s strength and reaction dropped by at least a third, and he began losing focus in the strangest way.
Roy seized that moment, and for the first time ever, won a spar against the man who had beaten him countless times.
He did not feel like laughing.
A twenty-minute bout. More than thirty consecutive losses before he clawed back a single win.
In a real duel, he would have died a hundred times over. There would be no waiting for suppression to take hold.
“Once Willpower goes above ten ... against weaker opponents, suppression should take effect much faster.” It was the only consolation he could give himself.
“Listen, give me ten minutes to rest, sober up a bit, then we go again?” Orin dropped cross-legged, preparing to enter meditation.
Roy smiled apologetically. He could not let the man easily see through his suppression-based swordplay.
“How about we change it up later? Try the hand crossbow. You said you could swat bolts out of the air.”
“Then I’ll show you how a seasoned Witcher, a veteran of the school, deals with crossbowmen.” Orin grinned, deep lines carving across his brow.
...
Ten minutes later.
After serving as a living target, the hooded Witcher leaned against the stable, staring up at the night sky. His expression turned increasingly complex, as if he were beginning to suspect that the old seizures left behind by the Trial of the Grasses decades ago were returning.
“Have I entered old age ahead of time? Hah. I should drink less.”
Roy wiped down his crossbow, thoughtful.
After several upgrades, Gabriel, under Crossbow Mastery activation, could break Orin’s Quen shield in two consecutive shots. With the homing effect of the guided bolts, even Orin’s extraordinary agility could hardly evade them.
Add in the stunning effect of Stunning Arrow, and whether Orin deflected the bolts with his Viper School silver sword or repelled them with Quen, he would fall into a 0.1-second stun.
A mere tenth of a second, yet enough to shatter his rhythm entirely, creating a bizarre deadlock.
In the yard, twenty yards apart, Roy used Gabriel to completely suppress the older Viper School Witcher, forcing him into constant defense, leaving him no chance to counter.
Of course, once the eight Stunning Arrows were spent, things would look very different. So...
Roy glanced at Orin, still lamenting to himself, and slipped back into the hut before the man could react.
...
The next morning.
Gentle sunlight gilded the statue of Clive, Father of the Sky. The deity, eyes wide with wrath, solemn and imposing, pointed unmoving toward a corner of the circular plaza, as though summoning thunder to strike down impurity.
A dense crowd of La Valette townsfolk surrounded a raised platform.
Four pyres stood upon it. One of the Sea Scorpion’s Enigma had once been bound there and burned alive. Today, another body had been added.
The corpse was in a horrific state.
A pyre thicker than a man’s thigh pierced straight through him, the blackened tip emerging from his mouth, tearing apart most of his swollen face.
His eyes bulged wide, his features twisted in unspeakable terror. Cuts from blades and bruises from blunt strikes covered his neck, arms, every patch of exposed skin. He had clearly been tortured before death.
From afar, he looked like a roasted fowl skewered on a stick.
“Oh, gods. What is happening to La Valette lately? Such dreadful incidents, one after another.” A bloated woman gasped, muttering a prayer under her breath. “Lord Clive, open your eyes, stop this wicked slaughter, protect your most devout cultists.”
Her voice was quickly swallowed by the rising clamor.
“This isn’t coincidence. Look at that death, it’s deliberate. I smell the Devil. A sacrifice ritual. The Devil will kill again, summon horrors. Run, all of you!” A foul-smelling vagrant shouted in panic.
“Shut up, idiot. This is divine punishment. Don’t you recognize him? Executioner Dillon. How many innocents did he torture? Countless souls died under his hands. He got what he deserved.”
...
“Let’s go, Kantila...”
Roy tore his gaze from the corpse and pushed his way out of the boiling crowd.
“Roy, you don’t know what he did to us this past month. He deserved it.” Kantila stared at the body with satisfaction, though a trace of regret lingered in her tone. “I only hate that he died too quickly. He should have felt more of our pain and despair.”
“I understand. You did nothing wrong. With what Dillon did, a quick death was too kind.” Roy said it, yet could not help feeling a measure of reflection.
The elven woman had changed. Only by shedding softness, by hardening herself into stone, becoming ruthless, could she survive in Dol Blathanna, where humans and elves warred without end.
“She must have gone home through the portal...”
...
Roy brought Kantila back to the Witcher’s hut.
He had introduced the woman from Zerrikania to his companions the day before. Agile, skilled with bow and horse, unburdened by the fragility or fussiness common to many women, she was easygoing, open, able to strike up a conversation with anyone.
She did not mind their sensitive identities, nor their ragged appearance.
No one objected. They would give her a ride as far as Novigrad.
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