Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 45
“Aaron! Where are you? Something’s wrong. Go fetch the package I left at your place. Now!”
The skiff under Lannor’s hand nearly smashed into Auridon’s small dock.
The villagers gathered there stared in stunned silence at Bernie’s fishing boat.
The bottom of the vessel had been dyed a deep, clotted red by the blood of two men.
Several village women clustered around Mistress Donna stepped forward anxiously, words on their lips.
But the moment they saw Bernie’s ashen face, they faltered and stopped.
It was clear they had something urgent to say, yet for a few breaths they could not decide which mattered more, their news, or the man bleeding out before them.
Lannor was only one man. He had only one man’s strength to spend.
Dragging Bernie onto the dock, he did not even notice the crowd pressing in around him. Under normal circumstances, that alone would have struck him as wrong.
“Gods ... Bernie ... I’ll go. I’ll go!”
Old Aaron had already worn a troubled look; now fear gripped his face outright. His old legs moved with surprising speed. In less than half a minute he was back, clutching the Alchemy Sack.
“Find some men. Light torches. Stand around me.”
Lannor took the sack, rummaging through it as he spoke.
Old Aaron did not know whether this was some manner of magic rite or something else entirely, but panic had already seized him. He obeyed at once, calling a few men to form a ring, each holding a burning torch.
The bolt’s head had sunk completely into Bernie’s belly. By Old Aaron’s reckoning, the man was already a corpse that had not yet stopped moving.
But Lannor was a Witcher. Perhaps ... perhaps there was still a chance.
Perhaps.
Lannor drew out a bundle of small, finely crafted knives.
He had commissioned the set from Ivan. The first to use them had been meant to be himself.
“Bring the torches closer.”
He stripped off his studded leather gloves, then his steel bracers.
The torches had nothing to do with magic. He needed their heat to kill most of the filth in the air, the way one worked beside an alcohol flame in a laboratory.
He had to operate on Bernie at once. No proper surgical conditions, no time to prepare. He would do it here, or not at all.
There was no time left to wait.
Bernie’s lips had already gone deathly pale.
Lannor pulled a brown bottle from the sack.
Redanian Herbal Wine, the common base for Witcher elixirs. Potent, unforgiving, strong enough to strip the throat raw.
Ideally, he would have used a clean dwarf spirit, not a liquor steeped in herbs. But the same truth held, there was no time.
He poured the costly wine over his hands, his wrists, the delicate blades, and Bernie’s wound.
“Mentos, correct my visual doubling.”
His movements remained steady. Once the procedure began, he forced himself out of the restless urgency clawing at him.
The sudden infusion of seventy percent proficiency had pushed his brain into stress response. Visual ghosting was only to be expected.
The Biological Intelligence Core completed its correction in a blink.
The overlapping blur in his vision was stripped away, the errors forcibly removed. The headache lingered, but his eyes, and his hands, were now utterly steady.
Old Aaron and the villagers watched from all sides. Lannor’s calm precision gave them something like hope.
The village elder glanced at Bernie in worry, then at Mistress Donna collapsed beside him, his gaze softening with pity.
He opened his mouth, meaning to speak to the busy Witcher, but Donna reached out, gripping his forearm, giving it a quiet squeeze.
Her head remained bowed as she shook it, faintly.
The elder sighed, and held his tongue.
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