Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 122: The Smell of Salt and Blood
Temeria’s political heart had been struck by a tidal wave because of Lannor’s slaughter the night before.
But across Lake Vizima, in Dark Water, the greatest news of the day was still, “How did the fellow who set out for Vizima yesterday noon suddenly turn up in the village by nightfall?”
The villagers did not yet know what he had done last night. They did not know what kind of storm those deeds would bring upon the kingdom in the days to come.
For common folk, this world’s flow of information was still medieval to the bone.
Magic was a luxury.
Lannor had not fled Temeria overnight as Triss had told him to.
Truth be told, after meeting so many sorceresses, he had been left deeply impressed by the political ambition of those peerless women, and by their political ... dullness.
History had been the subject that interested Lannor most.
When Stessa told him last night that once he died, his subordinates would hunt Lannor to claim the legitimacy of leading his organization, Lannor’s first thought had been Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s campaign against Akechi Mitsuhide.
It was not that Lannor was obsessed with foreign history. Once one had read enough of one’s own country’s history, foreign history always carried a freshness born of a different angle.
So whenever Lannor grew tired of studying history, he would dig up some interesting period from another country’s past for amusement.
During Japan’s Sengoku period, when Oda Nobunaga was only a few steps from ending the chaos, his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide struck at his lord’s residence and killed both Oda Nobunaga and his eldest son.
The vast Oda clan fell into chaos in an instant, and everyone understood the same thing at once.
Whoever punished Akechi Mitsuhide would gain the most legitimate claim to inherit the Oda clan.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi carried out that punishment, and later, at the Kiyosu Conference where power was redistributed, he successfully inherited a large piece of the Oda clan’s legacy.
It became one of the ladders by which he climbed to the summit of power.
Stessa’s argument had indeed resembled that situation.
If Lannor had still been nothing more than a university student reading for interest, Stessa might have frightened him easily.
After all, there was historical precedent.
But within the memories carried by the Gene-seed, the Emperor’s Children were all-rounders, warriors who could cut down bolt rounds with swords and also take part in planetary governance.
Practice and knowledge, joined with Mentos’s projections, made Stessa’s argument look crude enough to be a joke.
The time required to find the flaw in its logic was zero point five three seconds.
The premise that allowed the Oda clan to strike at Akechi Mitsuhide was that Oda Nobunaga had already become the great demon pressing down on the whole Sengoku world.
Before his death, his forces had beaten his enemies into a miserable, suffocating state.
Because of that, after he died, his retainers, who had been attacking on multiple fronts, could disengage from the battlefields where they stood with little difficulty and turn back against Akechi Mitsuhide.
But Stessa’s subordinates?
Were their circumstances better than Oda Nobunaga’s retainers?
Temeria was currently a stable kingdom. If those people could still live comfortably under Foltest’s pressure, then something was wrong with the kingdom.
Once Count Stessa, their highest banner, was gone, the Nilfgaardian faction would undoubtedly split into several pieces.
Foltest would laugh himself sick.
His enemy’s strength would be scattered, but not so thoroughly that it could no longer be suppressed.
Could there be anything more ideal?
Would he stand by and watch those splintered Nilfgaardian factions recombine by chasing down one witcher?
Unless he was a fool, impossible.
Whether judging by the enemy’s objective capacity or their subjective calculations, Lannor did not think he was in any real danger.
At worst, there would be bounties and assassinations. But again, did he look like a man afraid of assassins?
Without relying on luck or chance, Lannor had seen through the predicament of the Nilfgaardian faction Stessa had commanded by using his own learning.
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