System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 293: Cruel Debts Paid in Crimson
“Are you truly my child?” Old Mole tilted his head and studied the Witcher beside him. Very quickly, the wild joy he had felt at first cooled, and suspicion arose.
The young man before him was tall and lean, vigorous and handsome, far removed from the thin, scrawny boy in his memory, all ribs and bones.
Counting his age, his child ought to be a boy nearing fifteen. Yet there was no youthful liveliness or brightness on him at all. His expressions and movements were mature in every detail. He would pass more easily for eighteen or nineteen.
The Witcher’s gaze kept drifting toward the direction where the three thugs had been dragged away, cold to the extreme.
Old Mole had only seen such indifference on butchers who had kept meat shops for decades, and on taciturn adventurers in taverns.
The sort that made ordinary people keep a respectful distance.
Old Mole was no exception. Yet in the other man’s brows and eyes, he also felt a familiarity rooted deep in the blood.
“Are your eyes failing you? Of course he is our son. I carried him ten months and birthed him. I would never mistake him.” Susan adjusted the swaddling in her arms and affectionately took the Witcher’s hand. “It has been more than a year, and he was at the age of growing when we parted. Changes in his looks are only natural.”
“Look at the brows, the nose, the mouth. It is our Roy, no mistake.”
Susan looked him up and down, her face full of relief.
“But he has grown taller, and stronger. Master Letho taught him well, training you from a frail child into a strong man.”
“You have grown up.”
Susan’s eyes happened to meet the Witcher’s dark-gold gaze. She noticed the tips of his ears, like those of a half-elf, and asked curiously, “My child, what happened to your eyes and ears...”
“I passed the Trial of the Grasses and became a Witcher. Some of my features became different from ordinary people.”
“I’ll explain the details when we get back.” Roy comfortingly squeezed the old couple’s warm hands, then turned his head away. Where no one could see, he frowned slightly, and a conflicted look flashed across his face.
Without realizing it, he had been apart from Old Mole and his wife for a year. Seeing them again now, their hair was already gray-white, age plain upon them.
But he could feel that the concern in their hearts had never changed.
He, however, was different from before. He was not quite used to their burning gazes.
“Right, Father. Those three bastards hit you just now. How is your body? Does anything hurt?”
“I have rough skin and thick flesh. It’s nothing serious.”
“Let me see the wounds.”
Roy stubbornly examined Old Mole’s body from top to bottom, and his heart sank. The old man’s waist, abdomen, back, and neck all bore old injuries caused by fists and feet.
On the surface, those injuries had already healed and did not seem too serious. But if left unattended, one day they would flare up and cost him half his life.
Under observation, Old Mole’s constitution had weakened to four points because of the injuries, lower even than an ordinary man’s.
“You suffered while I was gone.”
Roy gritted his teeth and took a bottle of marigold potion from his storage space, making Old Mole drink it without allowing him to refuse.
Potions were potent poison to ordinary people, but the medicine Roy had prepared at Oxenfurt Academy could be used by ordinary folk as well.
After drinking the potion, Old Mole felt a warm current roll into his stomach and intestines. The pain from the bruises across his body seemed to ease a little. Moved, he clasped Roy’s hand, and his cloudy eyes gradually grew moist.
“My child, look over here. The little fellow must have recognized you.”
At that moment, Aunt Susan called out. The baby in her arms had somehow fallen quiet. His large, bright black eyes turned toward the Witcher, sparkling with curiosity like stars.
An infant’s senses were keen. He seemed to sense the blood relation with the person before him, and under the old couple’s surprised gazes, he took the initiative to stretch out one soft, fair, chubby hand toward the Witcher.
“Looks like little Minnole likes you. Brothers indeed.”
“His name is Minnole? What a lovely little fellow.” Roy crouched down, gently tickled the baby’s plump little foot, pinched his chubby cheek, then pulled the yellow dog that Griffin had transformed into, currently dozing in the hood behind his head, and stretched the dog’s mouth wide like a pancake, making the little fellow giggle.
That innocent, tender smile made the Witcher’s heart inexplicably soften.
After a year apart, suddenly having a younger brother left him rather unprepared.
But this was good too. When he left again, the old couple would have another family member with them.
“Do you want to hold him?” Susan glanced in surprise at the astonishingly obedient yellow dog. Before she could ask anything, her son had already stuffed it back into his hood.
“In a moment. You stay here.” Roy touched the baby’s smooth little forehead one last time, then stood. “My friends will help tidy up the vegetable stall. I need to deal with those three thugs first.”
“Roy...” Old Mole stammered, “Don’t offend the Willie Gang too badly, or we won’t be able to live in Novigrad after this.”
“I know what I’m doing.” The Witcher turned around, and the smile vanished from his face.
Under the frightened gazes of the onlookers, he entered the dark alley.
...
“These three fellows have been handled from head to toe by me. They’re honest now.” Orin cracked his knuckles, his face full of lingering satisfaction.
The three thugs, led by Vincent, lay slumped in the corner like mud, soaked in sweat. No wounds could be seen on them, yet snot, tears, and saliva streamed down their faces. Their eyes stared blankly at the sky, and their mouths kept opening and closing as they muttered to themselves, all the arrogance from the vegetable stall gone.
Witchers familiar with the structure of the human body had many ways to make a man unable to live and unable to die, and sufficiently hidden besides.
“Back when Kael and I had not yet left Novigrad, the local gang sent people to the stall to trouble Old Mole, trying to collect protection money. After we taught them a hard lesson, they quieted down.”
Orin shook his head, his tone turning cold. “I didn’t expect that the moment we left, those bastards would put the account on Old Mole and his wife. Speaking of it, I didn’t think things through and dragged your family into this. I should have been harsher then.”
“You already did enough.”
Roy spoke with gratitude, then turned his gaze toward the three thugs. He waved a hand before their faces. No reaction. “Slap, slap, slap.”
After three consecutive slaps, the thugs covered their swollen cheeks and came back to themselves.
Then they instinctively shrank into the corner, faces full of terror, warm wet traces spreading from their trouser legs.
“Devil. Witcher.” Vincent now wished he could slap himself twice. He had not expected his words to become true, that mutants would really appear to back Old Mole.