Chapter 282: Secrets at the Fish Stall

At the first pale gleam of dawn, the Oxenfurt Academy market was already moving, busy and orderly.

Dense crowds shifted without pause. There were cart drivers handling ox carts loaded with goods, bare-chested porters dragging handcarts, and, most of all, Oxenfurt townsfolk carrying vegetable baskets, shoulder to shoulder, rushing to the morning market.

The place was thick with the smell of sweat, vegetables, meat, and other sharp odors. Before one could even cover one’s nose, the ears were seized by a mess of noise, vendors shouting, red-faced haggling, noses being blown and spit hacked out, livestock braying strangely, children crying...

“Roy, how much farther?” The Zerrikanian woman frowned, her handsome brows knitting.

“Patience, Kantila. We’re almost there.”

Roy glanced at the account book in his hand, then, relying on strength far beyond that of ordinary men, gently pushed aside a potbellied fat man reeking of sweat. Before the man could turn around with fury on his face, Roy pulled Kantila by the hand and slipped into the crowd like smoke.

“In a place this chaotic...” The Witcher tossed a few coppers to a vendor whose nose and eyes had been reddened by smoke, deftly snatched up two skewers of charcoal-grilled octopus from the stall, showed a mouthful of neat white teeth, and bit into the springy octopus flesh. He handed the other skewer to the woman. “Nothing is more comfortable than a skewer of good grilled octopus.”

Kantila ate a piece of octopus and was carried several steps forward by the moving crowd. Then she asked curiously, “Mm ... Roy, how do you lot ... mm ... keep such energy and focus all the time? Do you not need to relax? Not long ago you were tangled in trouble at the Barony, and now you are mixed up in Oxenfurt’s messy disappearance case. Do you not feel ... mm ... tired?”

Kantila could not help thinking of the investigation with Orin yesterday. In her eyes, the empty, unremarkable room had been nothing special, yet the Witcher had easily found a great many clues there, even directly locking on to the killers’ identity.

Calm. Efficient. Like a precision instrument.

If she had not traveled with them for this stretch of road and witnessed the “deep friendship” of their mutual mockery and bickering,

she might well have believed the rumors, that mutations had worn away Witchers’ emotions, leaving them with only faint emotional fluctuations.

The fellow before her rather fit that rumor. Otherwise why did he keep rejecting her goodwill, utterly unmoved?

Roy swallowed the whole grilled octopus, wiped the grease from his hands, and smiled brightly. Instead of answering, he asked, “As a Zerrikanian, what do you think an ideal life should be?”

“Constantly challenging powerful monsters, and tattooing more honors on the skin,” the Zerrikanian woman said without hesitation.

“Same principle. Taking all kinds of strange and varied contracts, living on the pay from those contracts, that is also one of the ideal ways of life for Witchers. We were born for this bowl of rice. We will not tire of it before retirement. At most, we lower the frequency.”

...

“Come, come, have a look! Sea fish, river fish! Freshly caught this morning, fresh and cheap!”

A fishmonger with a headscarf, thin as a monkey, shouted loudly at passersby before a broad spread of fish tanks.