System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 75
Half a day later the mine yielded no intact corpses.
Roy looked as if someone had fished him out of a mountain of bodies and a sea of blood; the linen lining beneath his clothes, the leather jerkin over it, his trousers, all were stained with blood, shredded flesh and soft tissue. His once-clean face had not escaped either, and a vile blend of sweat and rank, fishy rot hung about him, stinging and numbing his nostrils.
He wanted, desperately, to fetch water and wash.
“Kid, don’t waste the clean water,” the Witcher said, stopping him. He was seated on the ground, wiping Gwyhyr. “We’ll be at Smaerk Mine at least a week, every drop must be saved.”
The man looked no better himself, smeared head to toe with Nekker gore; he resembled a great, bald brute drenched in blood and meat.
Roy paid him no mind.
“Dirt and stench I can stomach, but at least let me wash my hands,” Roy said, the idea making him wince. “I do not want to accidentally swallow Nekker flesh while I’m eating.”
“Heh ... suit yourself.” The Witcher tossed the remark aside, turned his face away and resumed stroking his sword. “If we run short on drinking water ... Nekker blood tastes worse than horse piss, but it will quench thirst for a while.”
“All right, you win.” Roy ground his teeth and gave in. It was obvious which was more lethal, thirst or hunger; clean drinking water was precious. “No wash then. I’ll hold out for a week.”
“Truth be told, Kid, now you finally have some of the right bearing, you look better.” Letho said it seriously. “If you cannot stand a bit of filth and foulness, how are you to become a proper Witcher?”
To soothe the boy he offered an example.
“You know Rotfiend?”
“I read about them in the notes, a carrion eater, like an Ooze,” Roy’s attention shifted, memory sharpening. “They feed on rot, corpses and refuse ... they hang about sewers, marshes, damp filthy places.”
“Let me be more specific.” The Witcher frowned and remembered a bad piece of business. “Years ago, I was twenty, had left Visegrad only a few years and spent the world hunting Monsters, eager to make a name. I took a contract on the River Alba to clear out some Rotfiends ... the corpses left traces that led us to their lair.”
“The place was piled with soft, swollen, rotting corpses, excrement of all sorts, moldy refuse, a stew of bacteria and venom ... a great pit of black-green liquid,” the Witcher said, eyes showing deep unease. “The stench cannot be described; worse than a cesspit.”
“You jumped in?” Roy caught on and sounded a little gloating.
The Witcher closed his eyes and sighed. “I grit my teeth and jumped in, killed three Rotfiends without trouble. But no matter how many times I bathed afterwards, I could not wash that stench away ... for a whole year no woman would have me.”
“A year,” Roy said, startled. “You mean the stink lasted a year?”
“To be exact, Orin and Kael can still smell it.”
“Uh...” The boy went slack-faced and suddenly the sticky blood and meat on him did not seem so sharp.
“This is not unique,” Letho added with weight. “I’ve met at least seven Witchers, elite of different schools, who’d had the same experience—jumped into a Rotfiend lair.”
Roy had a bad feeling.
“I think a proper Witcher needs at least one such trial to grow,” the Witcher’s amber eyes fixed on the boy. “Even if you are unlucky and never meet a Rotfiend, find a true cesspit and undergo the test.”
“I swear, Letho!” Roy cried out in panic, stopping the sentence in its tracks; the thought alone made him ill. “I will not waste a single drop of drinking water, please do not suggest any dung-pit trials!”
“Right! And there are still a few Nekker hearts to process!”
The Witcher watched the boy scurrying about, a small smile tugging his mouth as he nodded.
...
Day and night blurred in the cave. The two of them kept rough time, alternating meditation and watch, and got through the first day in the Smaerk Mine tunnels.
That night, counting the days, it had been a little over a week. Under the Witcher’s supervision Roy swallowed a second pre-potion. This time the pain was far less than the first; his reactions were weaker, and he bit through ten minutes of agony without fainting.
Aside from cold sweat and some muscle ache, there were no aftereffects.
He sank into Meditation to rest. When he woke he felt the fatigue gone; yesterday’s torment seemed like a hollow nightmare.
The dried blood and meat stuck to his hands and face had congealed into crusts in the mine’s chill.
The Witcher flexed his limbs and felt most of his strength return; the Nekker wounds were beginning to close and movement caused no real trouble.
He started issuing orders again.
“Gwyhyr is yours for now, take two—no, three corpses and chop them up.”
“Chop them up?” Roy was alarmed at the Witcher’s ideas. “Letho, you’re not planning another meat trial, are you?”
“The meat’s not for you to eat, though if you want to try Nekker stew you might.”
“Keep it for yourself then!”
With Carnage Skill to help, cutting up a squat, humanoid corpse was no trouble. In minutes the bodies were cleaved from head to toe into fist-sized chunks and rolled into four piles on a tent cloth.
The Paralysis Poison had set, changing from a dark green to a half-transparent jelly. The two of them smeared it over the steel sword and Gwyhyr, then poured it into the three piles of chopped meat.
As for the last pile.
The Witcher cupped the meat with his knotty hands and hurled the day-fermented, bloody, reeking flesh straight at the boy.
The shower of rotting meat soaked Roy through to the bone; his hair was not spared.
He stood frozen.
Did it have to be so provoking?
The crushed chunks and soft tissue smelled fouler than dung. An angry roar rose from his throat, then a sudden bright idea flashed through his head.
“All right, I know what you’re up to now. Mad plan.”
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