System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 2025 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 48
“Awake, Kid, how do you feel?”
A deep, hoarse voice. Roy forced open swollen eyes. Pain crawled through his limbs. He blinked around and realized he lay in the inn room.
It was nearly noon. Light through the window stabbed bright. Chairs and chests winked with doubled shadows, the world smeared and unclear. He shut his eyes and shook his dizzy head. After a long moment the ghosts of images peeled away and the room steadied.
“Letho, how long was I out?” He frowned, hand lifted to shade the shine off the Witcher’s bald head, “Could you sit somewhere else, you’re making my eyes jump.”
Letho shrugged with mild impatience, moved to a chair, and set a bowl of plain water in Roy’s hands.
“You were out a day and a night,” the Witcher said evenly, like a physician reporting vitals. “Shorter than I expected. Shows your constitution is good.”
“I do not feel good. Felt like I died.” Roy drank greedily, tilting the bowl until it was empty. A small coolness traveled his center. The memory followed like a shadow.
That pain after the precursor. A furnace lit beneath his ribs. Each vein and cell burning, screaming. Thousands of knives threaded through his bones and flesh. It was like someone had carved him with a red-hot blade.
“You should have warned me with harsher words.” Roy’s voice held resentment, the edge of fear. He never wanted that again. It had been worse than dying.
“True, my call was off.” Letho’s eyes softened around the edge for an instant, a reluctant apology. “I thought you would lapse quickly in such agony. Over the last hundred years, most apprentices given pre-potion blacked out inside five minutes; nine out of ten in under three. Their pain lasts only a little while. You—”
“How long?” Roy asked.
“Six minutes.” Letho produced a gray notebook, turned pages with clinical calm. “No incontinence, no babbling, no convulsions, no vomiting blood.”
Cold slid down Roy’s spine. He was grateful he’d spent attribute points on toughness.
“Why not tell me these possibilities beforehand?”
“Isn’t it fine now?” Letho patted his shoulder. “You made it through. Only the first dose hurts so badly. Later doses are half as bad, then less and less. When you fully adapt you will only frown.”
“I thought it was just one dose.” Roy swallowed, a thread of dread in his face. Half of that agony had been ruinous. “How many more do I have to take?”
“Three months total. One vial a week. Eleven more.”
Roy inhaled, hand wiping clammy sweat from his cheek. He thought of stopping. If he quit now, all that torment would have been for nothing.
“Your Willpower and constitution exceed ninety-nine percent of Viper apprentices.” Letho watched him. Roy made no argument; Letho relaxed and changed the subject. “Maybe it is because you are older. Most apprentices start under ten. You are nearly fourteen, yes?”
“So age is an advantage. Why do Witchers prefer younger apprentices?” Roy pressed.
“Children are blank pages, full of possibility.” Letho spoke patient as a teacher. “Their bodies are not finished. Mutagenic potions can reshape them systematically. An adult frame is set; reshaping is harder and often the body breaks before mutation finishes, and death follows.”
Reshape, then collapse. Roy’s understanding of the Trial of the Grasses deepened beyond the cold phrase, seventy percent mortality. If the body did not hold up, it would tear itself apart. If it held, then what came next?
“Can mutation happen more than once?” Roy asked the question he had kept. “If you survive a Viper mutagen, could you take another school’s mutagens after? Wolf, Griffin, Cat, Bear?”
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