Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 103: A Blade Through Silence
After sending Sylvena away, still bright-eyed over tales of the great city, Lannor touched the prism crystal at his lower back again.
“Rita, are you still there?”
“I am always waiting for you.”
Even when the sorceress had no intention of flirting, seduction seemed to have settled into her bones. A few words from her could soften a man down to the marrow.
Fortunately, Lannor’s standards had been raised rather high of late. Two sentences were not enough to turn him stupid.
“Tell me about necromancy. I hear it’s forbidden.”
“Necromancy? Why are you asking about that?”
Margarita’s voice sharpened, as if merely naming the art had left a bad taste on her tongue.
“My only lead, an informant I had in hand, died. By accident, more or less. We can’t abandon that trail. Triss and Keira have done everything they can, but the other side controls information like Foltest himself. Speaking of which, the king isn’t mixed up in slave trading, is he?”
“Absolutely not,” Margarita said, each word cut clean. “The abolition of slavery took root in the Northern Kingdoms because it suits their interests. The interests of the realm are the interests of the king. Foltest lacks restraint in certain matters, but he is no fool. Why would he touch a taboo like that for nothing?”
“As for necromancy, Lannor, even if that lead dies with the corpse, I will not support you using such magic.”
The witcher’s brow tightened.
“Rita, those children are about to be shipped south and broken into bed slaves.”
“And that is still better than throwing an entire stretch of land’s power into imbalance, letting spirits run wild and the soil bleed dry. Necromancy reverses the flow of the soul. Even briefly, it invites backlash.”
Lannor ground his molars.
He had thought necromancy was forbidden because it demanded too much power from the sorcerer, because failure was too dangerous. In that case, finding a sorcerer strong enough would have solved the problem.
He had not expected the spell itself to wound the world.
Were Lannor the sort of man who would do anything to reach his end, perhaps that would have been that.
But the reason Gaunter O’Dimm had left him a corpse was precisely because the thing knew Lannor was not such a man.
He wanted to free the slaves. He wanted to butcher the hand behind it all. Those desires came from his own sense of right and wrong.
For that, he could stand alone against an enormous hidden power and grind himself against it until one side broke.
For the same reason, he could not chase necromancy while pretending the consequences did not matter.
Morality was a limit set upon the self. Since that limit came from the will of his own life, Lannor would not step over it.
To cross a line he himself had drawn just because the road had turned hard, because he was tired, because the work was ugly?
What sort of man would that make him?
“Understood. I won’t consider necromancy again. That’s all for now. I need to meet someone.”
“Take care, Lannor. I am sorry I cannot help you more in this matter.”
“Don’t say that, Rita. Fifteen hundred orens, two royal advisers, ordinary folk couldn’t earn that much coin or meet sorcerers of such standing in several lifetimes.”
Margarita fell silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice had lost some of its polish.
“If, and I mean if, Lannor, you truly find no way forward, you can return to Aretuza.”
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