Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 120: The Coast Beneath Black Clouds
“I have no national feeling for Temeria, my lord count.”
Lannor kept the honorifics intact, which made a fine contrast with the way he had one hand clamped over the count’s face and was dragging him along like a dead dog.
“So whether you truly spent yourself for this country, endured disgrace for its sake, suffered in noble silence and all that, I do not care in the least.”
The count’s pampered body thrashed with all its strength. His twisting feet tore loose the neat stones of the expensive cobbled path and sent them scattering, but none of it slowed Lannor by so much as a breath.
Through the gaps between Lannor’s fingers, Stessa’s eyes seemed to recognize where this road led. Count Stessa began to shriek.
“What are you doing? Where are you taking me? Fuck you, mutant filth, you ... nghaa!”
His scream broke under the sudden tightening of the hand over his face.
“Where?”
Lannor asked it back.
The road had reached its end. The estate gate loomed before him, four meters high, solid timber banded in iron, ten centimeters thick.
On ordinary days, opening it took two warriors pushing with all their strength.
Now Lannor lifted the inner bar, pressed the count’s head against the iron-bound timber, and said, “Truth is, I thought what you said made sense. A man ought to honor a contract. So in this game...”
“You are about to step out of bounds.”
Seen through Lannor’s fingers, Stessa’s eyes bulged as if they meant to burst from their sockets.
“No! You cannot do this! I have not crossed, I have not ... agh!”
Lannor pushed the gate open with one hand. The hinges groaned, and the human scream rose above the sound, sharp enough to scrape bone.
He could feel the roughly spherical structure under his palm trembling at the edge of fracture, much like Count Stessa’s mind.
The gate opened by slow inches. The scream climbed with it.
At last, when the gap revealed a thin blade of lamplight from outside, Lannor gave the verdict without a change in expression.
“Now you are officially out of bounds.”
“Son of a bitch.”
The arm clamped over Stessa’s face drew back a little. Then, after the briefest gathering of force, Lannor drove the man’s head into the gate.
Thud.
It felt like a ripe melon smashed against stone.
The richly dressed body hung in Lannor’s grip, twitching only with the last scraps of nerve signal.
With that mess still braced in one hand, Lannor pushed the estate gate open.
Beyond it, nearly a hundred constables stood with torches raised, staring at the witcher who had walked out of the famous estate.
The constabulary commander felt certain he would have to go before Melitele tomorrow and offer a prayer.
From the moment he saw fire rising from Stessa’s estate, his heart had been hammering as if it meant to leap out of his ribs.
Who in Vizima did not know the count and the king were at each other’s throats?
But who could have imagined they would start fighting inside the city?
The shadow of political conflict hung over every commoner’s head. The commander was not quite a commoner, not with several hundred constables under his hand, but compared to the man inside that estate, he was only a bigger insect under their boot.
He had begged his way through lord after lord until the news finally reached the ears of the Mayor of Vizima. Then came the order, written on a slip of paper and stamped with a personal seal: proceed at once, investigate the cause of the fire, and calm the situation.
The commander had stared at that slip and wrung every drop of political wisdom from his life trying to read the veins beneath it.
But if he had possessed that sort of talent, he would hardly have spent his years rotting in the post of constabulary commander.
Caution first. He took fewer than a hundred men and set off for Stessa’s estate.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.