Beast Slayer Online: Initialization
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 78: The Surgery Begins
Without even turning his head, Lannor answered the girl’s trembling question.
“Because you’re brave and kind, loyal and clever. Because you fought back against slavers and shared your food with children you didn’t even know ... wait. You didn’t actually believe that, did you?”
Though he never looked at her, he could practically see Arya’s face turning scarlet behind him.
The girl had nearly burst apart from excitement at being praised so openly by a “great knight.” Then the excitement froze mid-breath.
“S-so that wasn’t why?”
Her voice carried equal parts disappointment and hope.
Lannor answered with his usual blunt honesty.
“The main reason is still your situation, Arya.”
“I can roughly guess how you ended up here. I can also tell this world is nothing like the one you came from.”
At last, the cat eyes met the girl’s grey ones.
“Killing people requires a reason. Saving people requires one too. But you don’t have one here, Arya. This world has nothing to do with you.”
“Not until I create a connection between you and it. Relationships. A way to survive. Velen is a vicious land. If you wander alone, chances are you’ll meet a bad end.”
“Only after that do your kindness in sharing food, and your courage in stabbing a slaver, become qualities worth considering.”
“So I believe having you assist me is safer than entrusting this to a massive organization with tangled interests like Aretuza. Safer too than the countryside of Velen, where the power structure is simpler, but cruelty and prejudice run wild.”
The panic that had seized the girl eased little by little beneath those measured, rational words.
Trust was cheap. Trust built upon judgment and logic carried weight.
And to the person receiving that trust, it became acknowledgment.
“I ... I understand, my lord!”
Arya inhaled deeply, opened the door, and headed downstairs toward the dining hall.
Lannor’s sharpened hearing caught her muttering to herself the entire way.
“First situation ... second situation ... third situation...”
Like a child reciting a sacred list, over and over until she had burned every word into memory.
Arya had once described the nature of her house sigil to him, the direwolf.
And now, watching her go, the witcher could feel it clearly. Encouraged and entrusted with responsibility, the girl truly possessed that stubborn, tenacious Wolf’s Blood.
The room had been cleared open at the center.
Unlike when he operated on Bernie, Lannor prepared neither alcohol nor flame. Witchers almost never fell ill. Mere bacterial infection meant little to their bodies. One swallow of elixir and the bacteria would die faster than the witcher’s own cells.
Piece by piece, he removed the heavy armor of the School of the Bear until only the leather breeches remained around his waist.
Under candlelight, the surgical instruments lay unfolded before him, silver edges glinting coldly.
Lannor lowered himself slowly into a meditative kneel.
“We finally have everything we need, Mentos.”
Witcher meditation sharpened mental focus, improved bodily control, and even accelerated the absorption rate of elixirs for a short time.
At that moment, when Lannor drew a scalpel into his hand, the movement was steadier even than his terrifying swordsmanship.
His hand slipped into the Alchemy Sack and touched the unusually reinforced container once more.
Cat eyes fixed themselves upon the living mass floating inside nutrient fluid, the Gene Seed.
Mentos did not answer the idle remark. The Intelligence Core had already fully entered surgical assistance mode.
“Please open the container.”
First step of the operation.
Mentos could not guarantee Lannor would still possess the willpower for complicated actions like opening the vessel once he began carving open his own chest. Therefore, the task had to be completed beforehand.
Click.
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