Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 59
A power reaction?
That was Lannor’s first thought.
What in the hell?
That was the second.
He was quite certain the person before him carried no magical item. She sat slumped in the darkness of the wooden cage, both legs stretched limply forward, not from idleness, but because the calves on both legs had been cut away.
With so much muscle missing, the legs no longer had the strength for anything complicated.
All she wore was the sort of dress common on farmwomen. So it was a woman, then. A plain-looking woman.
Lannor guessed even the dress had only been left on because it did not get in the way of cutting meat from her legs.
There was nowhere for such a woman to hide a magical item and keep it hidden.
Then she herself had power?
That was even more absurd.
Power meant mage. And a mage had been reduced to this in the hands of a criminal gang?
For a moment, Lannor did not even know where to put his hands.
This was the first mage he had ever seen with his own eyes.
The woman in the cage, however, seemed to draw strength from the sight of him. Her voice, thin as it was, gained a little weight.
“Don’t stand there gawping, witcher. Did the academy hire you to find me?”
Find you? Academy?
What in the hell was that supposed to mean?
Lannor could not untangle it at once, but he knew what mattered most right now.
“Madam, keep your voice down.”
His tone was hard, but the sound was no louder than an insect’s wings.
The woman’s night vision seemed excellent. She glanced left and right, saw that some prisoners in the dark had turned unfocused eyes toward them, then forced down the wild joy on her face and fell quiet.
Lannor continued, “Tell me who you are, and why you were taken.”
He wanted to say that she had clearly mistaken him for someone else. His greatest claim to fame so far was leading a few soldiers a short distance and finding a man-eater, the rest being mostly killing drowners for a fishing village. If anyone was hiring him for work worth more than two hundred orens, then the employer had poor taste indeed.
But he could not say that.
The wounds on this woman’s legs were obviously infected and festering. Even if one counted only from the condition of the wounds, she had been here at least five or six days.
Lannor did not know how she had lasted that long.
Wounds or mental torment, either one could have killed a person.
Seeing the way she was forcing herself upright, Lannor feared that if he explained the truth, she might lose that last held breath and die right there in the cage.
What could reduce a sorceress to this state? Did this camp truly hide such a level of power?
Cold sweat rose across Lannor’s back at once.
If he rushed forward again, he might blunder into that power without even knowing it.
He had to ask now.
But then the sorceress frowned and looked him over, taking in the blood on his hair and face.
“You weren’t sent by the academy to rescue me, were you, witcher?”
Lannor pressed his lips together and did not answer.
Unexpectedly, the woman’s mind proved far stronger than he had estimated.
In utter despair, she had suddenly seen a straw to grasp, then realized in the next blink that the straw had snapped. Even that did not break her.
She coughed hard, then drew a deep breath, lifted her head, and met Lannor’s eyes again.
“An assassin who makes himself this much of a mess. I must be burned half senseless with fever. The academy would not hire a novice like you. Hah. No matter. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
The sorceress gave a small, ruined laugh.
“I am the headmistress of Aretuza.”
Fuck.
Did the first line have to be that explosive?
Lannor’s cat-pupils narrowed despite himself.
The tavern gossip from Gors Velen surged back into his mind. The headmistress of Aretuza, one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world.
Was this camp truly such a dragon’s den?
“Margarita Laux-Antille?”
“Yes. That is me.”
Shock struck hard, but Lannor kept his face steady.
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