Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 35
Just as Lannor had expected, there were indeed a few simple trap devices set along the way.
Nothing too elaborate, only the sort of thing a hunter might rig for wild game.
Lannor’s eye picked them apart one by one.
The Pendant of the Roaring Bear hung steady against his neck, and that put him further at ease.
Because it meant there were no signs of magic at work anywhere in this area.
The trail led them at last to the mouth of a cave.
At the entrance, Lannor gestured to Phillip behind him. This was the murderer’s hiding place.
The Witcher felt the wind coming out of the opening and confirmed that the cave had only one exit.
The soldiers made their preparations in an easy mood. They hung iron lanterns over their chests.
A single candle sat inside a fully enclosed iron box, with only one small shuttered slit on the outer side.
The structure focused the lamplight forward, and because it hung over armor, it did not grow hot enough to burn the wearer.
A small piece of medieval battlefield cleverness.
The soldiers filed in one after another, and the clatter and scrape of iron against iron sounded urgent and dense beneath the cave’s echo.
Yes, by now neither Lannor nor the soldiers cared in the least about stealth.
In the dim firelight, they could just make out a strange figure in the depths of the cave, thrown into obvious panic.
“Run, bastard. Run faster. Let’s see where you think you’re going.” One of the men in front shouted with naked malice and fury. “You dared eat human flesh in Dunham. Forget the gallows, we’ll tie you to a pyre and burn you alive so you can pay for it.”
Yet even as he shouted, the shield in his hand never dropped from in front of his face.
That undoubtedly saved him.
A stone flew out of the cave depths and struck the shield with a heavy thud.
The shield tilted for an instant, then snapped back into place.
A criminal who ate human flesh was, beyond doubt, the most dangerous kind of quarry. No one could expect such a man to surrender quietly.
Had that stone not hit the shield, it would likely have smashed straight into the soldier’s helmet.
A steel helm protected the head well enough, but its very structure meant that even a hard open-handed slap could leave the man within reeling in dizziness.
Still less a stone of real weight.
The famed Janissaries of history had been known even for their bare-handed technique, the notorious Janissary Great Palm.
“Resisting, are you? Good. Keep resisting.”
The soldiers quickened their pace, fury over the trampling of their faith erupting alongside the resentment of slogging through swamp in armor.
Lannor heard York shouting too.
“You filthy dog, we’ll have you begging to be put on the stake already.”
At last, the man inside could take no more of the threats closing in from outside. He flung a dozen or more stones wildly, then lunged forward in a frenzy.
Every one of them was caught by the shieldmen at the front.
And this man, perhaps knowing full well what terrible punishment awaited him, seemed to Lannor to be rushing forward more in search of death than escape.
A dagger no longer than a forearm, with no attempt to guard his own body, was flailed wildly as he threw himself straight onto the soldiers’ blades.
“He doesn’t want to live. Don’t kill him here.”
A Witcher could see in the dim, and the killer’s little intention was plain to Lannor, so he spoke up at once.
What the man had done more than merited every torment the world could devise.
These veterans worked well together. While the killer tangled with one soldier, three sword-and-shield infantrymen raised their shields and closed around him.
The three shields pressed inward. The arm holding the dagger was trapped in the gap, and with a crack, it was broken outright.
After a useless scream of agony, several one-handed swords stabbed in through the gaps between the shields.
All the points angled down. Most struck the thighs.
At that point, the matter could be called settled.
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