Chapter 313: The Cost of Stolen Decades

On the statue.

The blood-red, corpse-dry man drew a deep breath.

He quietly straightened his spine. His gaze passed, almost by accident, over his hands, all exposed muscle and no longer human. A flicker of horror crossed his molten eyes. “What happened to my body?”

“Why have I become like this?”

His gaze swept over his thighs, chest, belly, and shoulders.

His rough fingers trembled as they touched his back, his neck, and the uneven ruin of his cheeks.

Only then did he understand.

This tormented husk was covered in nauseating scars.

From the look of it, he could hardly be called human anymore.

“Mate, you have forgotten all of it? You were drugged by a sorcerer named Steingard and brought to this laboratory,” Flavius drew a breath, but still spoke the cruel truth. “As an experimental subject, you endured a series of brutal, perverse torments ... In the end, your body was seized by an evil spirit.”

“The brothers of the Viper School helped drive that evil spirit out. That is why you have your mind back.”

“Experiment? Yes, the experiments!”

All at once, the dark-red muscle fibers on Kaen’s cheeks twitched like cramping cords.

His breathing quickened.

Memory rolled through his skull like a storm tide.

A cargo ship, the sea, a storm.

Rage, curses, wailing, numbness.

Countless words, images, and sounds, countless broken fragments, strung together, reordered themselves, and became clear, logical.

He remembered everything.

Before he had fallen to this state.

He had guarded a smuggling slave ship called the Flying Stag.

He no longer took contracts that left him one misstep from death, and had lived several steady years.

Until one day.

The captain of the Flying Stag told him that, because the hold was “too crowded,”

he had no choice but to arrange for a passenger named Steingard to move into Kaen’s cabin.

That sorcerer was unlike most humans. He never despised Witchers.

His manner was gentle. His speech and conduct were courteous and open.

Deep eyes blinked with the light of wisdom.

Everyone who spoke with him felt as if they were bathed in a spring breeze.

After they spent some time aboard the ship together, Kaen’s guard against the sorcerer weakened without his noticing.

He had not expected the man to harbor evil intentions.

One night, while Kaen was meditating, Steingard used magic and drugs to anesthetize him.

Through the haze, he faintly heard, beyond the cabin, the sea surging, the storm raging, the hull crashing, the crew wailing.

He was powerless, and was brought back to the laboratory.

Then began a stretch of days without sun, a life worse than death.

The operating table became his home. Blood dyed it red, then dried.

Endless torture and questioning, pain without end, drowned him.

At first he resisted to the bitter end, then wept and begged, wailing for mercy, holding nothing back as he told them every secret of the Cat School.

But that demon still did not spare him.

It kept torturing him, breaking him, numbing him.

Until he wanted only death.

The last image in his memory was an animal statue opening scarlet eyes at him, like a whirlpool, sucking him in.

His soul seemed to leave his flesh, freed from pain, falling into an eternally dark “prison.”

He knew nothing of the outside world. There were not even dreams.

No worry. No joy.

Only once in a while could he hear a little movement, see a faint thread of light.

Until today.

He had escaped that drowsing darkness.