Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 1
“Clop, clop,” the sound of hooves came up from the winding, rutted road.
This place lay neither near nor far from the village, used mostly as the peasants’ fields.
Along the ridges, dogs began to bark, wary, while the cats seemed to sense something amiss; their fur bristled, then they vanished in a blink.
Such beasts had always been sensitive to magic.
From the direction of the hooves came an old horse, worth little, bearing a young man on its back.
Lannor held the reins tight, urging his mount on with careful focus.
Velen, a province under the great Northern Kingdom of Temeria, was the poorest of them all.
At first glance it looked lush, a riot of growth and color, but any decent man who stayed here two hours would learn the truth, this was a place as foul as dung.
Beneath that thick greenery lay swamps and miasma; the rich waters fed a teeming abundance of life, but offered not a shred of convenience to humankind.
Or rather, those overgrown, overbreeding “creatures” were far more dangerous to common folk than the bogs themselves.
Desolate marshes, impoverished villages, rude yokels, and monsters that seemed to spring from nowhere, that was the sum of what people thought of this place.
A farmer toiling by the ridge lifted his head. A stranger on the road was one of the few things to talk about in a life stripped bare of variety.
So he looked the traveler over, slow and careful.
The youth’s face carried a pale weariness, yet there was still some vigor in him.
His features differed from most men on the Continent, the eye sockets not deep enough, the nose not sharp enough, yet his face was clean and comely, his skin unblemished.
And yet, set against those shunned nonhuman races, elves, dwarves, gnomes, he was plainly human.
Must be from some far-off hole where even a king’s piss wouldn’t reach, the farmer thought.
... Still better than those damned nonhumans.
Leaning on his hoe, the farmer snorted twice and spat thickly onto the ground.
The youth wore cheap blue padded armor, darkened with grime, even the cotton at the waist split and spilling out. His cowhide boots had no thickened soles, cheap things, biting at the feet, but good enough to walk the earth.
He had a sword, nothing strange in Velen.
But slung across his back?
Even a farmer knew better. No one wore a sword like a bow.
How was he meant to draw it in a fight?
The farmer was just about to curl his lips into a mocking grin, he had not even a proper pair of shoes, but mockery needed no rules, when he saw the boy’s eyes as he came closer.
“Cat ... cat eyes! A mutant freak!”
The mockery turned to panic. The farmer shouted as though he had seen plague given flesh, some loathsome corruption, stumbling backward again and again.
He fell on his back, limbs flailing, yet still scrabbled away in terror.
The mark of a witcher, a pair of cat eyes.
Forged by ancient human sorcerers to purge monsters, these mutated warriors, once born of a noble purpose and calling, had become, in the eyes of the present, little more than a pestilence.
Lannor let out a breath, barely there. Inwardly, he told himself, medieval fantasy was still medieval.
Ignorance bred malice.
Those amber cat eyes flicked sideways, giving the farmer on the ground a glance.
Then Lannor tightened the reins, bringing the horse under control.
The old horse was docile, and not strong. It was hungry, and he had learned to ride only a week ago.
If being thrown onto a saddle and whipped whenever he fell counted as learning.
“Hrrreee—”
The farmer’s dog, black and white, loyal to a fault.
Even as the horse’s hooves could crush it in an instant, it darted through them, rushing toward its master.
Lannor spent no small effort keeping the dog from harm.
Hungry as he was, it left him short of breath.
But when he saw the little creature bounding, unharmed, toward its master, he let out the faintest sigh of relief.
Yet just as the dog was about to leap into the farmer’s arms, a slender black shadow slipped past Lannor’s leg.
“Thwip!”
“Awoo!”
The sound of air splitting was sharp, dreadful. The lively, loyal dog burst into blood and a strangled cry mid-leap.
A bolt struck in through its lower back, punching out through its chest.
It did not reach its master. Its twitching body slammed down at the farmer’s feet.
The farmer was stunned senseless.
The faint ease on Lannor’s face vanished at once, freezing into cold, hard stillness. His body, and the old horse beneath him, both went rigid.
A large, imposing figure rode past him at an unhurried pace, mounted on a horse just as powerful.
The man’s beard and hair were thick, like a brown bear given human shape.
Yet his face held no trace of feeling, cold as carved ice.
Two swords were strapped across his back.
He wore a solid, intricate composite armor, mail, leather, iron, and padding interwoven into a coat that fell to his calves.
A pendant shaped like a roaring bear’s head swayed at his throat with each step of the horse.
And his eyes were the same as Lannor’s, amber, feline.
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