Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 68
When they saw the sorceress again, she was sprawled across blood-stained sand, swaying slightly as she fought to stay conscious.
Without her ruined legs, Margarita looked less like the famed headmistress of Aretuza and more like some drunk tavern woman collapsed in an alley after too much wine. Whatever strength she had forced out moments ago had clearly scourged her nerves raw.
“This ... this is the headmistress of Aretuza?” Phillip asked as he helped support Lannor, disbelief plain on his face. “Aren’t sorceresses supposed to be ... you know. Stunning?” He squinted at her. “She looks ordinary enough.”
“Glamour cream,” Lannor explained with a weak wave of his hand. “I asked her before. The way she talked about her looks ... that confidence wasn’t fake.”
“Then we’d best be careful not to wipe the stuff off,” Phillip muttered. “I know my men. Bunch of bastards can’t keep their hands out of their breeches. You tell them she’s important, sure, but if she’s really as beautiful as the stories say, one or two idiots would still try something.”
“So they can’t control themselves, but you can’t control them either?”
“Heh.” Phillip shot him a sidelong grin. “You’ve never led men before, have you, mate? Authority’s something you spend. Waste it on every little piss-stain problem, and when real trouble comes, nobody listens anymore.”
Lannor gave him a weak thumbs-up. “Fair enough. Never been in charge of anyone. Learned something today.”
Phillip dared not waste time over the sorceress’s injuries. The horses he ordered were quickly prepared. Margarita still looked deathly pale, but her mind had mostly cleared by then.
“No stretcher,” she said firmly. “Witcher, I’ll ride with you.”
By then Lannor had already retrieved his silver sword and Pope from the edge of the forest. The poison still gnawed at the marrow of his bones, an ache like fever that would not break. But he could still ride. Barely.
“You sure you can handle it, lady?” Lannor asked, eyeing her legs suspiciously. The wounds looked half-rotten already.
Margarita rubbed at her temple. “The wounds and infection are secondary. Get me back to Aretuza quickly enough and magical healing can make my legs even lovelier than before.”
Even now, her first concern was beauty instead of walking again. Lannor genuinely could not understand how sorceresses thought.
Phillip assigned one cavalryman, York, to escort Lannor and Margarita to Gors Velen. Neither the witcher nor the sorceress looked capable of fighting much longer. The rest of the riders would bring the rescued children and the evidence gathered from the camp back to Crow’s Perch, where Lord Vserad would no doubt turn the whole affair into fresh prestige.
Lannor swung himself into the saddle, adjusting the reins alongside York, ready to depart into the night.
Margarita’s complexion had been dreadful a moment earlier. A patient rotting from infection could hardly look healthy. Yet the instant she settled onto Pope behind Lannor, she seemed to lose all the bones in her upper body, melting against him. Her expression relaxed almost immediately.
Even through layers of armor, Lannor could feel the astonishing softness and curves pressed to his back. Glamour cream altered faces, not figures.
Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.
Was this what magic did now?
“ ... What are you doing?” Lannor asked, frowning.
He was young, hot-blooded, and witcher mutations did nothing to suppress hormones. But at the moment, poison was chewing through his body, and Margarita’s altered face was hardly enticing, no matter how absurdly perfect the rest of her looked.
“Nothing,” Margarita replied evenly, shaking off the strange tingling sensation crawling through her body, like a faint electric current.
Yennefer had been telling the truth.