Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 112: Shadows Moved Beneath Ice
Lannor slipped over the wall with effortless grace.
He landed upon the grass with the softness of a cat touching ground, not a single clatter of metal plates following him down.
Before entering, he had removed the plate components from his armor.
For a moment he resembled the man he had once been when first arriving in Auridon, chainmail beneath padded cloth, stripped back to mobility and silence.
This was nothing like the clumsy infiltration back in the Velen camp.
The enemy here did not stand beside crashing waves beneath the stink of brine.
And unlike those armed rabblemen, the defenders of this estate were trained soldiers, hardened by discipline and battle.
The situation before Lannor was infinitely more dangerous than the camp at Velen.
But the growth he had undergone since then was even more absurd.
At the edges of his vision, two faint lines of light hovered across his retina.
Stealth Proficiency: 9
Assassination Proficiency: 6
During several consecutive nights of Deep Memory Dive, these skills had effectively received personal instruction from warriors of the Emperor’s Children.
That legion was not specialized in stealth or assassination.
But theirs was a legion obsessed with perfection. A warrior might not master every discipline, but ignorance itself was unacceptable.
Which meant the full names of those skills should technically begin with long, ornate noble titles, ancient and extravagant, the names of the Emperor’s Children warriors from whom the techniques originated.
The proficiency values were no longer measured against ordinary humans.
They were measured against demigods.
A nine and a six meant that, setting aside raw physical capability, Lannor’s technical mastery alone had already reached nearly a tenth of an Emperor’s Children warrior, a transhuman killer who had spent centuries waging war across endless stars against alien civilizations.
Like a drifting shadow, Lannor moved through the brightly illuminated estate.
One glance was enough for him to spot every blind angle hidden between overlapping torchlight.
Those pockets of darkness became his stepping stones.
A patrol moved along the cobbled path within the manor grounds.
One halberdier. Two sword-and-shield infantrymen. One crossbowman. One hunting dog.
Standard patrol formation.
Lannor could identify more than ten such teams by sound alone.
The entire estate was clearly being swept over and over throughout the night, like a battlefield searched by a combing operation.
Lannor stood no more than ten paces away inside the darkness.
Ordinary human sight could not pierce the dark, and the dogs’ noses posed little problem.
Before drinking his elixirs, Lannor had deliberately sprinkled small amounts across his padded outer coat.
The smell of witcher elixirs was overpowering, enough to bury his own scent completely.
And because the ingredients were all natural compounds, the hounds would not react with discomfort the way they did around common magical potions tainted by obvious arcane residue.
He watched the patrol pass in silence before moving again.
His true target here was the count himself.
If the estate was alerted prematurely, Lannor did not believe a man of such status would fail to have escape routes prepared.
Nor could he identify the count by physical traits alone, making a reckless intrusion into the main structure unwise.
But Lannor thought quickly.
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