System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 78
“Cough, cough...” From the other side of the dust cloud came a wet, violent coughing fit. Roy ran over and found the Witcher slumped against the wall, his leather torn and ragged, looking like a beggar.
Arms, chest and thighs were scored with cuts from flying rubble and blackened by burns; his face was smeared with dust and soot, a sorry sight.
Alive, at least.
Elixirs were spent, but three Celandine Potions remained, and they would do.
“Letho, how do you feel? Where are you hurt?” Roy asked.
“Cough...” The Witcher paused to catch his breath, peering through the white haze, shaken. “Nothing fatal ... cough, cough ... feels like a rib’s cracked, right leg bone’s hit ... cough ... can’t believe Letho of all people nearly died by his own fire.”
“You were that close?” Roy’s mouth fell. He’d been thrown back and yet survived; an ordinary man would have been blasted to pieces.
“My Quen sign was still on when I burned the nest, otherwise I’d be down below greeting my comrades.”
The Witcher’s eyes went narrow with concern, “You all right?”
“I kept my distance, lucky escape.” Roy smeared the blood at his temple with a hand and held it up. “Still, I’m not great either. Look—blown out at seven holes.”
“I’ve never seen anyone bleeding out of seven holes and hopping about afterward like you,” Letho said dryly.
They rested until the dust settled. When the white haze cleared, the narrow cave—unremarkable before—revealed something else entirely.
The blast hadn’t wrecked the forward tunnel. It had collapsed the left wall instead, exposing a strange, sealed chamber.
Beyond the fallen rock, another world opened up.
“Is this how surviving disaster brings luck?” Roy helped the limping Witcher into the secret room.
It was small, roughly the size of a single room in an inn. The style and finish differed sharply from the crude mine: the walls were smoothed and polished, clearly worked with care.
If anyone lived here, the room was empty. No furniture, no bed.
Worse, the wall had been sealed tight at first, meaning no obvious exit; to live here would be to starve in the dark.
“Who in their right mind builds an empty secret room in a pitch-black mine?” Roy felt a sting of disappointment. He’d hoped for treasure or an adventure.
“Looks like a sorcerer’s lair to me,” the Witcher said. “Only someone who can open portals would come and go from a place like this.”
With Roy’s help the Witcher shuffled to the most prominent feature: a huge, smooth wall facing the entrance.
His rough hand slid over the stone. Almost instantly the pendant at his throat, the Viper School emblem, vibrated strangely. This tremor had weight to it, not the small shiver they’d felt around Nekker; it felt stirring, energizing.
“There’s something odd about this wall?” Roy mimicked Letho’s probing, but the surface was solid stone.
“No tricks you can feel. The wall’s been warded by a sorcerer, but there’s still some Dimeritium Powder left.” Letho rummaged through his battered potion belt and took out a gray powder, the bane of sorcerers, the material for a Dimeritium Bomb, an anti-magic device.
He smeared the powder across the blank stone. Where the dust touched the wall, color bloomed as if water had soaked through parchment; ripples of motion ran outward, and a faded, ancient mural unrolled itself before their eyes.
They read it in silence, from left to right.
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