The clatter of hooves drifted along the winding, broken road.

The place lay neither close to the village nor truly far from it. Most of the land was given over to fields and muddy strips of cropland. Along the ridges between them, dogs began barking in sharp, uneasy bursts, while the cats reacted far worse. Fur bristling, they vanished into the brush as though something unseen had brushed against their whiskers.

Animals had always been sensitive to magic.

Out on the road came an old horse worth little more than its hide, a young man riding atop it.

Lannor held the reins tight, jaw set, guiding the mare with deliberate care.

Velen, a province of the great Northern Kingdom of Temeria, was the poorest stretch of land in the realm. At first glance it looked almost beautiful, thick green growth splashed with color beneath the summer damp. Yet any decent man forced to remain there more than two hours would discover the truth soon enough.

Under all that greenery sprawled endless marshes, stagnant water, and fever-breeding mist. The weeds and reeds grew thick enough to choke roads and drown fields. Life flourished there, just not the sort that made living easier for humans.

Truth be told, the creatures breeding unchecked in those swamps were far deadlier than the bogs themselves.

Trackless wetlands, starving villages, rude peasants, and monsters crawling out from nowhere, that was all most folk remembered of Velen.

A farmer working the ridgeline straightened slowly, leaning on his hoe. Travelers were rare enough here to become conversation for weeks afterward, so he studied the stranger carefully.

The young rider looked pale, the sort of pale that came from exhaustion rather than sickness, though there was still life in his eyes. His features were strange by the standards of the Continent. His eye sockets were too shallow, his nose bridge too soft. Yet he was clean-faced, almost handsome, with skin far finer than most peasants ever saw.

Still, he was plainly human.

Not elf, not dwarf, not gnome.

Probably some foreign breed of human from a land so distant even the king’s piss could not reach it.

…Better that than one of the damned nonhumans.

The farmer sniffed thickly, spat a wad of phlegm into the dirt, and squinted harder.

The rider wore cheap blue gambeson darkened with old grime and sweat, stuffing already bursting from the seams around the waist. His leather boots were thin-soled rubbish, the sort that rubbed feet raw but at least kept mud from swallowing them whole.

He carried a sword too, nothing unusual in Velen.

But the blade was strapped across his back.

Even a peasant knew that made no damned sense.

How was he supposed to draw the thing like that?

The farmer’s lips had just started curling into a mocking grin when he finally saw the rider’s eyes.

Cat eyes.

“Cat eyes! Mutant freak!”

The sneer vanished instantly. Panic tore across the man’s face like a knife slash. He stumbled backward as though he’d seen plague rot walking on two legs, tripped over himself, and crashed into the mud. Even sprawled flat, he kept scrambling backward with hands and heels.

The hallmark of a witcher, those slit-pupiled cat eyes.

Long ago, human sorcerers had created mutated warriors to scour monsters from the world. A noble purpose once. These days, folk looked upon witchers the same way they looked upon disease.

Lannor let out the faintest sigh.

Medieval fantasy was still medieval, after all.

Ignorance always came with cruelty attached.

His amber eyes slid toward the farmer only briefly before he tightened the reins and tried to steady the horse.

The mare was old, obedient, and weak. Lannor himself was hungry, half-starved really, and had only learned riding a week ago.

If being thrown onto a saddle and whipped every time he fell counted as learning.

The mare whinnied sharply.

The farmer’s dog, black-and-white and fiercely loyal, darted between the horse’s legs toward its master without hesitation. One misplaced hoof could have crushed the beast flat. Lannor hauled hard on the reins, fighting both the horse and his own trembling arms to keep it from happening.

By the time he succeeded, breath scraped raw through his chest.

Still, when he saw the little dog bounding safely toward its owner, some of the tightness left his shoulders.

Only for an instant.

A black blur slid past his leg.

“Whsst!”

The bolt cut through the air with a sound cold enough to freeze marrow.

The dog burst apart in mid-leap, blood spraying across the field alongside a shrill, choking yelp. The crossbow bolt punched in through its lower back and burst from its chest at an angle.

Instead of reaching its master, the twitching corpse slammed down at the farmer’s feet.

The man stared, frozen stupid with terror.

The trace of relief vanished from Lannor’s face. His expression hardened at once into something blank and cold. Even the old mare seemed to stiffen beneath him.

A large figure rode slowly past.

The man atop the heavy warhorse was broad as a barn door, wrapped in thick muscle and heavy armor. His beard and hair were wild enough to make him resemble a walking brown bear.

Yet his face held nothing at all.

No anger. No disgust. No satisfaction.

Just ice.

Two swords rested across his back.

His armor was a layered composite of chainmail, leather, plate, and quilted padding, fitted together into a heavy coat reaching nearly to his calves. Around his neck swung a medallion shaped like a roaring bear’s head.

And his eyes matched Lannor’s exactly.

Amber cat eyes.

Without dismounting, the man leaned sideways in the saddle and caught the bolt’s shaft in one hand as he passed. With a sharp yank he dragged the dying dog clear out of the field.

It was difficult to imagine someone carrying over thirty kilograms of armor moving with such smooth precision.

The dog still twitched in spasms, thin whines bubbling from its blood-filled throat.

The man did not even glance at it.

He pulled the bolt free with a wet tearing sound, wiped the blood clean on the animal’s fur, and tucked it back into his pouch. Then he tossed the corpse toward Lannor.

The boy’s already filthy gambeson grew darker with fresh blood.

Warm life faded quickly in his hands.

He still could not grow used to the feeling.

No, that was not quite true.

Some stubborn part of him refused to become used to it. If he lost that disgust, then whatever remained of the life he once knew would finally die for good.

Only the faint twitch of his jaw betrayed anything at all.

Then even that disappeared.

His face became as empty as the older witcher’s.

“Bordon. What are you planning to do with it?”

“Our lunch.”

Bordon’s voice carried the same dead stillness as his face.

“Dogs are easy to catch.”

Dogs were creatures shaped by generations beside humans. Even those who disliked them still found something likable in them, loyalty, liveliness, companionship.

Bordon saw only meat.

Lannor’s expression did not shift in the slightest as he nudged his horse forward beside him.

“We shouldn’t draw more attention to ourselves, Bordon. You know the situation.”

His hands trembled faintly while he hooked the dog’s corpse onto the saddle hook.

The iron hook resembled the kind hanging in butcher stalls, meant for hauling slabs of meat.

For witchers, they were more often used for loot.

Bordon’s eyes shifted toward the farmer collapsed in the mud.

A dark stain spread instantly through the peasant’s trousers.

“You’re right. I’m wanted, so…”

Armor rattled softly as Bordon swung down from the saddle. Instead of drawing one of the swords on his back, he pulled the dagger hanging across his chest.

He intended to kill the man.

Lannor recognized it immediately.

For a witcher stripped of emotion, a man whose life revolved around coin and bodily necessity, murdering a peasant to erase witnesses was hardly worth hesitation.

Lannor’s face remained equally blank.

He slid awkwardly from his own horse and hurried after him. Across the field, the farmer clutched his hoe so tightly his knuckles whitened. He still could not stand, but terror had at least driven enough life back into him to cling to the tool like a weapon.

“Wait, Bordon.”

Lannor stepped in front of him once the older witcher came within two paces of the farmer.

Careful not to touch the armor.

Last time he had done that, Bordon had broken three branches across his back as punishment. The man had said plainly that if it happened again, he would chop off Lannor’s hand.

In Bordon’s eyes, the Bear School armor was worth far more than the boy wearing it.

“We stop here first. Killing him leaves traces too, doesn’t it?”

Even so, Lannor did not move aside.

His face stayed cold, detached, as though the farmer’s life meant nothing and he cared only for avoiding trouble on the road.

Bordon considered it for a moment, then slid the dagger away.

Mutation had stolen his emotions, not his mind.

Lannor turned his head slightly, letting out the smallest breath.

After another short silence, Bordon looked toward him instead.

“How’s your Axii Sign practice?”

One of the witchers’ five Signs, meant to cloud minds and bend thought.

Lannor’s pupils narrowed sharply for a split second before returning to normal.

By the time he met Bordon’s gaze again, nothing remained on his face.

“Not good. I barely get time to practice. You’re the one arranging the training, remember?”

His tone stayed level and natural.

“Hm.” Bordon scratched at his thick beard. “Focus on Quen for now.”

Quen, the Sign of protection against physical harm.

The older witcher walked past him. This time Lannor did not block the way.

From behind Bordon, a faint shimmer of magic flickered.

The farmer’s terrified face slackened into dull confusion.

“You didn’t see anyone. Your dog ran into the woods. You were too afraid to follow.”

The words came out flat and mechanical from Bordon’s mouth.

The moment the farmer nodded vacantly, Bordon turned and walked away without another glance.

Lannor followed after him, though climbing back onto the saddle cost him several clumsy seconds.

Bordon knew perfectly well how poor the boy’s riding was, so he never bothered turning around.

And in those few seconds, Lannor moved.

His cat eyes flicked toward the dazed farmer while his left hand formed a subtle gesture near his waist.

Magic gathered silently before his fingers, condensing into an inverted triangle.

A complete, flawless Axii Sign rune.

At once, something changed inside the farmer’s muddy, vacant stare.

“Good luck, you miserable bastard.”

Lannor paused, then gave the faintest exhale through his nose.

“No… wrong words.”

He mounted the horse in one smooth, silent motion. In that instant, he handled the old mare with a grace that would have shamed master riders.

Amber cat eyes narrowed beneath the shadow of his brow.

Calm.

Focused.

Like a tiger crouched over prey.

“Good luck to both of us.”

Lannor’s encounter with Bordon had been a matter of accident.

Or perhaps it was the accident of being cast into this magical, medieval world at all. A university student, healthy in body and mind, with parents and a past like any ordinary life, thrown inexplicably across endless voids into a savage, dark realm. No reason, no explanation—just the stark, cruel fact of it.

Here, magic existed, but it was sparse, undeveloped, a trickle rather than a tide, never enough to shape society. In such a backward world, human life was cheap.

In Velen’s forests, venturing even a few dozen paces could bind one to death’s shadow. Starvation, disease, attacks by beasts or monsters, or even a single bite from a strange insect could be fatal. The folk of Velen had grown numb to death.

Lannor had only glimpsed such lives through the pale pages of history books, imagining the hardship of ancient peasants. He knew that, stripped of magic and monsters, life here resembled that of long-dead commoners. Yet knowing was one thing; witnessing the brutality and weight of it firsthand was another. The sheer frequency of death pressed on him, unrelenting.

Fortune—or lack thereof—meant he could not be a simple peasant. He had become Bordon’s “Child of Surprise,” claimed under the Law of Surprise, turned into a witcher like him.

The Law of Surprise was an ancient custom, older than kingdoms, older than kings. It dictated that a man saved by another might owe a recompense unknown at the moment of rescue: the first thing seen upon returning home, or something already possessed but unrecognized—most often a child. That child would become the “Child of Surprise.”

Even in a world where magic existed, it was a scarce resource. For a modern student terrified by the harshness of this place, the chance to wield such power might have been a blessing.

Yet…

“What’s our target this time?”

Lannor’s fair, foreign-looking face carefully guided the old mare around a fallen trunk, moving slightly ahead and to the side of Bordon. The massive man beside him, thick-haired as a brown bear, would not tolerate him wandering out of sight for long.

Bordon’s lips parted through the center of a thick, wild beard.

“Could be two or three small Foglets gathered together, or a single older one. The fog’s size and power rarely extend beyond that.”

“Can’t even estimate numbers? This plan seems… reckless.”

Lannor showed no reaction, but Bordon’s unseen eyes tightened slightly.

Witchers exceeded ordinary men, yet in raw physicality, not even a single witcher could match five determined humans. They hunted monsters through skill, knowledge, and most importantly, experience. Tracking a creature from faint traces, deducing type, number, strength, weakness, and then striking under optimal conditions—that was a witcher’s method.

If Bordon’s pre-hunt preparation matched this standard, he would never have grown a beard in the first place. As a boy, he ought to have died in some wasteland long ago.

Lannor knew this truth silently.

A cold gaze, ice creeping along his spine, came with a voice as hard as frost.

“You lead. Use Quen well.”

No discussion—command. Bear School witchers lacked emotion, and in sending others to die, even the thin veneer of politeness was gone.

Lannor nodded calmly. If he were not already considered expendable, he might have been grateful for his cat eyes, the gift of survival.

Nearby, the farmer who had survived the dog’s death crouched, groveling, pointing to the splatter of blood in his field for four soldiers clad in standard Temerian armor. The dog’s remains marked its loyalty even in death. The farmer babbled, the soldiers irritated, iron gauntlets hovering as if ready to strike. After a few scoldings, the farmer finally indicated a direction. The soldiers spat, muttered curses, and mounted their horses.

Bordon was now wanted by the Lord of Velen. Medieval justice, slow and crude, meant that despite hiding their traces, he would not cease hunting, not even for basic sustenance. He would not even pay the “cost” of the hunt.

Lannor and Bordon stood at the edge of a shallow valley carved into a small hill. Inside, broken stones lay scattered, obscured by a low yellow-green fog that neither wind nor moisture could disperse.

Lannor’s gaze flicked to the Pendant of the Roaring Bear around Bordon’s neck, the finely wrought bear head trembling faintly. It sensed the power emanating from the fog. Judging by the tremor, it was weak.

His stomach growled, empty, but Lannor moved deliberately, flexing limbs, warming the body. The loyal dog had already been eaten; Bordon had left him the head. Not much meat, but enough. Lannor had grown accustomed to hunger.

Bordon did not delight in cruelty; he could not. Yet an emotionless witcher, stripped of hormones, could not be expected to care for his tools beyond utility. He neither wanted Lannor to starve nor cared if he did. Witchers endured hunger better than most.

Lannor did not see Bordon reach for elixirs from his potion bag, nor touch the swords on his back to coat them with oils. Normally, these actions increased a witcher’s advantage against monsters. Expensive, potentially toxic, but nearly without flaw. Bordon would not spend the coin. The risk fell to Lannor as scout and vanguard, the cost of Bordon’s frugality.

“Forward.”

The bear-like man drew one of his twin swords from the back with the low scrape of metal, the long blade flashing cold silver. His gaze on Lannor’s back was equally icy.

Ahead, the Foglets waited—unknown in number, unknown in strength. They could shroud themselves in mist, cloak in invisibility, even shape it into illusions. Their gray-white skin stretched over lean frames, claws sharp as razors. One swing could decapitate a dog or a sheep; quilted armor shredded like paper beneath them. A peasant would be gutted in seconds, intestines flowing into the mud. Their specialty was ambush.

Behind Lannor, a witcher who had hunted countless monsters, clad in thirty kilograms of armor, drew his silver sword. Silver tempered for monsters but iron at its core, deadly to humans as well.

Lannor seemed unmoved, expression frozen, hands gripping his worn gambeson, eyes vacant.

On his retinas, a clear, concise display appeared:

⸻

Name: Lannor

Race: Witcher (Magically Augmented Human)

Skills:

Ursine School Swordsmanship

• Training Program: Established

• Guidance: In Progress — Interrupted

• Reason: Insufficient Processing Power

Elixir Knowledge

• Data Recording: In Progress

• Brewing Guidance: Interrupted

• Reason: Insufficient Processing Power

Quen Sign

• Beginner Training Program: Established

• Guidance: In Progress — Interrupted

• Reason: Insufficient Processing Power

⸻

One by one, the crucial witcher knowledge—swordsmanship, potions, Signs—was listed, each marked “Insufficient Processing Power” at the end. Red arrows traced the allocation of what remained of this precious computational capacity—a nearly completed, bright scarlet progress bar reading “Parsing.”

The gaze behind him grew colder. Lannor, calm, flicked the retinal display off with thought.

Time to work.

Lannor first used the wafting method, carefully fanning a thread of mist toward his nose.

He had to be certain the power-laced fog was not poisonous in itself, or harmful in some other way. Had the biological computer in his brain, the one he had picked up during his journey through the Void Sea, possessed spare processing power, he could have learned the answer by merely touching the mist with a fingertip.

Unfortunately, his neural processing had already been diverted.

So an Intelligence Core from a high-technology world had been reduced to this.

A faint sting spread through his nasal passages, sharp and peppery, but his witcher body adjusted almost at once. Lannor gave the smallest nod. The toxin would burn out an ordinary man’s lungs within five minutes. For a witcher, it would bring discomfort, but it would not cause harm within half an hour.

It would not affect combat.

His thin leather boot stepped cautiously into the edge of the fog.

With a soft rasp, Lannor drew the steel sword from his back as he felt his way forward. A wooden grip, iron-gray steel crossguard and blade. A Velen longsword. Like everything folk thought of that province, it was cheap, crude, and badly made.

It lacked the restraining effect of silver, but against corporeal monsters, it was not useless.

As far as Lannor knew, this monster-hunting contract had come from an elder in a nearby village. According to him, a certain delicious fungus grew in this valley, thick and nowhere else. It was the only thing their village could sell for a decent price to merchants in Gors Velen, Velen’s capital.

Then, a year ago, the fog had appeared without warning. Those who went in to gather mushrooms never came back.

Now the village did not even have a single sound iron farming tool left.

No coin.

When the two witchers arrived, the village scraped together the last of its money, fifty-three orens, to hire the filthy, evil “mutants” to clear away the “wicked fog in the valley.” When the elder threw them the advance, his face twisted with fear and disgust, as if he had been forced to touch lepers.

It reminded the modern mind inside Lannor’s skull that even if he escaped his “teacher,” his situation would still be far from good.

But troubles had their order.

The ones waiting in the future could remain there.

The danger before him had to be met now.

Lannor’s amber cat eyes stung faintly in the poisoned mist, yet he did not blink, not even once to wet them. The heightened senses born from witcher mutation began to stir. That enhancement, wrought through disease, elixirs, magic, and worse, could greatly amplify and alter the original human senses, making witchers fit for the purpose sorcerers had designed them for.

To hunt monsters alone.

His thin leather boots scraped weeds across the ground, making a sound as faint as insect wings.

“No heavy breathing here. No strong monster heartbeat either… quiet.”

All Lannor could hear were his own footsteps and Bordon’s behind him. Bordon’s steps and heartbeat were lighter than his.

It was hard to imagine such sounds belonging to a musclebound giant close to six-foot-three, wearing a full set of heavy composite armor.

Monstrous bodily control. Monstrous fundamentals.

Lannor could picture it, the absurd scene from some film, a man lifted by the throat with one hand before his neck was crushed in the grip.

His witcher “mentor” could truly do it.

Then, as Lannor felt his way forward, touch and hearing caught something wrong at the same time.

His vertical pupils narrowed and shifted focus.

“Below the ground… trembling? Burrowing!”

Soil and stone were being dug aside. Something was moving beneath the earth.

Not a Foglet.

Without thinking, Lannor’s spine arched like a startled cat’s, then snapped straight in the next instant. His body sprang a full pace aside like a bent root released under tension.

With a crash of loose earth, a vicious humanoid claw burst from below.

The monster dragged the rest of its body out after it. Humanoid, but short, about the height of a dwarf, no higher than a grown man’s belly. Gray-white skin lay bare and slick. A blood-streaked mouth split open in a savage grin. Fold upon fold of swollen flesh crowded around its neck until the neck itself could not be seen, wet and foul.

Lannor’s sword hand loosened, then tightened again, testing the grip over and over.

A Nekker.

Like Foglets, Nekkers were scavengers. Alone, they were weaker than Foglets, but there was one difference.

They lived in packs.

There was a saying on the Continent. If a monster is truly pathetic, numbers make it happy.

“Wuaaagh!”

Shrieks rose from the fog, too many to count at once.

Lannor’s chest sank cold. His “mentor” had misjudged even the species, all to save himself some effort.

His narrowed eyes flicked backward. In the thick mist, Bordon’s hulking outline showed no intention of stepping in.

Lannor knew what he was thinking.

Foglets and Nekkers were unlikely to live together, but since there was a “tool” holding the front…

Why not confirm it?

One could never have too much caution.

The massive figure watched coldly as monster and witcher faced each other.

If there was any mercy in the mess, it was that Lannor had never fully trusted Bordon’s preparations with his life.

“Seventeen Nekkers. Quen and swordsmanship only…”

His cat eyes swept the fog as Lannor calculated.

Quen and swordsmanship were the bulk of the lessons arranged by his “teacher.”

Seventeen Nekkers were enough to slaughter a village in sparsely populated Velen. Most Velen villages had only twenty or thirty people in all, women, old folk, and children included.

And facing that number now was a young man who had undergone witcher mutation for barely a month, and had held a sword and studied Signs for no more than three weeks.

His face remained as cold as ice.

“Good. I can hold.”

Three weeks. Even a well-fed man, chopping firewood in mechanical repetition, would need a full week of hard, mindful practice just to learn the right and least wasteful motion.

And that only meant proper movement. It did not guarantee he would strike true every time.

Swordsmanship involved stance, terrain, reach, body shape, and every ugly variable of real combat. A year or two merely to train the fundamentals to passing standard would be entirely normal.

Yet this young man, after only three weeks with a sword, understood his own ability with clear, cold reason.

Not only could he “hold.”

He could make it look convincing while doing so.

Lannor finished weighing strength against strength.

The monsters, faced with fresh meat delivered to their claws, lost the last of their restraint.

It was impossible to tell which Nekker moved first.

In any case, the fight began.

Four soldiers in Temerian standard-issue armor were drawing closer to the valley where the power-laced fog spread.

They spat from horseback, laughed, cursed, and traded filthy jokes about whores and bedplay. Yet beneath the laughter in their eyes and faces lay a flat indifference.

A soldier’s indifference.

The kind that had looked past death too often to care.

Among the four were a crossbowman, an archer, a halberdier, and a sword-and-shield infantryman. The sword-and-shield man led the enforcement squad. The shield on his back looked new, painted blue and marked with the silver lilies of Temeria.

The crossbowman had just told a joke about a prostitute and a werewolf. The others’ rough laughter dragged on for a while before dying down.

Once it did, he turned toward his captain.

“Say, captain…” His face twitched with hesitation. “We’re not going to end up… you know… dead at that mutant freak’s hands, are we?”

Before the captain could answer, the halberdier spat.

“What, scared now? There’s four good men here. I swear, the moment that freak shows his head, your bolts and arrows will be in his meat before the captain or I need to lift a finger. You’re carrying a crossbow, a fine one. Who dodges a bolt?”

The halberdier wagged his head, easy as a drunk at market.

“But…” The crossbowman still looked uncertain. “I heard, folk say those freaks can use magic.”

The word magic dropped over them like cold water.

Even the relaxed halberdier shuddered, as though something filthy had brushed his skin.

That was when the captain finally spoke.

“Don’t fret.” He lifted a pendant in one hand.

It was a stone carved in the shape of a turtle.

“Lord Vserad already gave orders. I brought Turtle-stone. That filthy shadow-crawling magic won’t get near us.”

The soldiers knew it. Common folk said the same. Turtle-stone could restrain magic.

How could that be wrong?

So the men relaxed again, even the crossbowman grinning now.

Before long, they followed the narrow forest path and arrived before the valley.

The strategy for a single hunter facing a pack was simple in theory: turn one-versus-many into a series of one-on-one fights.

Nekkers were not particularly strong. A farmer armed with a long-handled pitchfork, if calm and brave, could survive an encounter with a single Nekker. Their claws were sharp enough to dig through earth, but the reach of a polearm easily outweighed them.

Lannor, though still new to this magical medieval world, had already faced a few battles. He knew that an enemy who could be handled with ease in a one-on-one duel became deadly the moment there were two against one.

The reality: even a witcher’s veins and tendons lay mere millimeters beneath the skin. For claws or weapons, that was as good as nothing. A scratch was enough to wound, a wound enough to hinder. And as the disadvantage mounted beyond control, death came swiftly and inevitably.

Lannor had never experienced it, and he had no desire to. So even with the School of the Bear’s emphasis on strength and constitution, and its rigid, solid swordsmanship, he shifted his footing constantly.

Seventeen Nekkers surged forward in a single wave. Behind him, Bordon’s gaze was cold as ice, without warmth. The young witcher could only move laterally. To avoid being surrounded by the throng, he had to move at double their speed.

A hungry young man? Impossible? Not at all. Lannor did more than keep pace.

Bam!

His thin leather boots struck the soft valley soil in perfect coordination with his muscles, sending clods of earth and broken roots flying. The slight youth lunged sideways into the nearest opening like a maddened bear.

The shrieking, claw-flailing scavengers swiveled to follow. Nekkers had no chance against a witcher’s burst of speed in a straight line. Yet the last of the long line cut across a shorter path, closing in on Lannor’s front. Their reeking mouths displayed rows of twisted, corrupted teeth, strung with the remnants of carrion.

Five Nekkers had already claimed his path, crouching, claws flexing, anticipating their prey.

Lannor’s face did not change. It was as if he wore knightly plate instead of cheap quilted armor. As if the five sets of digging claws before him did not exist. He watched their mouths stretch wider with the lure of fresh meat until the instinct to hunt took over.

He leapt, compact body twisting midair, using his weight against the descent. Claws snapped downward. His amber cat eyes widened ever so slightly.

“Quen!”

The Sign of physical protection flared to life in a shimmer of magic. Normally, Quen hid invisibly, only activating when struck, absorbing and dispersing impact. But under the Bear School teachings, it manifested as an orange-yellow spherical shield.

It was not advanced. In a sorcerer’s eyes, even a witcher’s Signs were little more than cantrips. Against a single Nekker, it might block the first strike, then overload and shatter.

But Lannor, flung from a stable age into a savage one, would make full use of every ounce of power at his disposal.

Spherical shields were common enough—form beneath the feet, close above the head—but if, by a rare coincidence, an enemy fell from above while the shield was still forming, and the barely-closed dome snagged a foot?

Nekkers had never felt the world shift beneath them, never misjudged a step. Today, they did.

Balance—the most vital factor in any martial engagement—was suddenly turned against them. Lannor’s cat eyes met the panicked, widening gaze of a Nekker midair. Three of the five were unbalanced by the coincidentally forming shield, sailing over the young witcher and crashing into the pursuing pack. Chaos erupted.

Crack! The shield shattered. Even without absorbing a strike directly, the force of three Nekkers colliding with it was enough to destroy it.

Two Nekkers in front still lunged, claws out, oblivious to the chaos behind them, intent only on biting first. Lannor’s eyes regarded them as they did a slab of meat on a chopping block. The Quen Sign had never been meant to protect.

Bam! The shattered orange-yellow fragments carried real momentum outward.

The two airborne Nekkers had no time to react; their posture twisted under the blast.

Then a flash of cold steel.

Whoosh!

The cheap Velen longsword met the first Nekker at an odd angle, blade pointing along its thin torso. Its gray steel seemed to bite deep into flesh, resisting like cutting into cured leather. Against silver it would have been effortless, but even this weight and edge carried momentum through the first, piercing the stomach.

By chance, the blade’s tip grazed the jaw of the second Nekker, sliding into its brain. Luck? Perhaps. But beneath it lay Lannor’s absolute precision: force, angle, and control of the edge measured to perfection.

Only at the last instant did his thumb brush the crossguard slightly, the thrusting force against the Nekker’s resistance making the guard shift with a soft crack. The wooden grip fractured; blood splashed.

Against ordinary foes, the longsword would still suffice. Against monsters—even a Nekker—it was near-suicide. Lannor had effectively lost his only weapon.

Meanwhile, the remaining fifteen Nekkers scrambled upright, charging.

Yet Lannor seemed finished. His arm relaxed. He let the sword and Nekkers fall alike.

He did not look back, but amid the clamor of their feet, he heard what he needed: the light, cat-like footfalls of someone skilled in the art of war.

From the fog behind the fifteen Nekkers, a massive black silhouette appeared, silent, cold. Bordon. No Foglet present; safety confirmed.

Silver gleamed.

Unlike Lannor’s precise and ruthless swordsmanship, Bordon’s strikes embodied the Bear School’s hallmark: solid, devastating strength.

Shhhck!

Blood and the sound of shattered bones sang in a dreadful arc. The silver sword cut through the air, slicing four Nekkers clean from chest to spine.

The fifth’s chest split halfway, the blade lodged against its sternum, force flinging the lean body aside. Its tip cut through the skull of the sixth Nekker in passing.

Fifteen clustered monsters, exposed and vulnerable—Bordon dealt with them in mere swings.

For Lannor, the use of his young body in the fray had been worth every risk.

Crack! The silver sword’s edge bit through the last Nekker’s skull.

Bordon, the burly bearded man, wiped the blade clean with an oiled cloth, expression unreadable, then slid it back into its sheath with a soft shing. The monsters lurking in the power-laden fog were annihilated.

The hunt had gone exactly as Bordon had predicted: effortless, cheap, and clean.

Seventeen Nekkers. If he had struck them all head-on, even the Bear School armor would not have held against their encircling onslaught. At best, he would have walked away lightly wounded. Repairs alone would cost thirty orens; the silver sword’s edge, ten more. Add elixirs and oils, and the tally climbed further. Witcher work required careful accounting of cost versus gain.

Fortune, however, had smiled recently. Bordon tightened the clasps loosened by motion, then lifted his cold, unflinching cat eyes toward his apprentice. Lannor stood, still gripping the battered Velen longsword, chest heaving with ragged breaths.

“Regulate your breathing,” Bordon commanded. “Mutation wipes our emotions. Fear does not exist. But the body’s instinct survives—adrenaline surges, energy leaks. Normal. Adjust your breath, and recovery comes fast.”

Lannor’s head drooped, sweat absent, yet beneath the shadow of his mentor, a faint flicker of surprise passed through him. This was common sense instruction, rare from a man who usually cared only for combat efficiency. Lannor noted, quietly, that he had saved Bordon some expense this time.

He wiped his brow and lifted his head, expression returning to the icy stillness typical of Bear School witchers.

“Understood,” he said, letting his breathing grow more pronounced, and deliberately drew his hunting dagger to collect the Nekkers’ ears—proof of the kill.

Bordon, meanwhile, began stripping alchemical ingredients from the monsters, things he had never taught Lannor, and apparently never intended to.

“This fog wasn’t conjured by Foglets, nor is it the Nekkers’ doing. Have we completed the village’s contract?”

Lannor cut a long ear with a slit, blood splattering onto the earth. The villagers’ intent had been to gather the valuable mushrooms again, but the magical fog remained unexplained, let alone cleared. The monsters were gone, but the mist itself remained poisonous to ordinary humans.

“Doesn’t concern us,” Bordon said flatly. “The corpses are our payment. No monsters left, job done. Fair trade.”

His eyes flicked to Lannor’s sword.

“Your swordsmanship is sloppy. You can’t even hold the sword without it slipping. Stabbing a Nekker in the belly? Farmers know that’s a joke. It doesn’t stop their counterattack before they bleed out. Your luck saved you: the second one thrust its head into your blade, letting you face only one hindered by a corpse. Otherwise, your hand would be torn to pieces.”

“I’ll give you another sword,” Bordon continued, “but you owe me ten orens.”

Ten orens. Even a Bear School silver sword, half-worn, cost ten orens to repair. Lannor’s reward? Likely another cheap Velen longsword, worth two or three orens at best.

Yet Lannor did not flinch, accepting the deal calmly. Counting the cost of mutation potions, he already owed his mentor more than four hundred orens. This debt anchored him as Bordon’s scout. Whether he agreed or not was irrelevant; the terms were set. Following Bordon meant accepting the dangers of monster hunting—and a lifetime of high-interest debt.

Witchers lived long and rarely lost vigor with age, meaning Bordon’s “loan” could hang over Lannor for centuries. Few liked owing money. Lannor, especially, did not.

The wet, slick sounds of dismemberment and ruptured blood vessels lingered in the valley. The stench of Nekker blood carried far. Bordon had harvested all valuable alchemical ingredients—claws, livers, hearts. Lannor, unusually, had yet to finish collecting even the ears. The incessant clatter irritated his heightened senses.

“What are you dawdling for?” Bordon asked, emotionless. He did not wish to waste time. They had been in the fog over twenty minutes; even a witcher’s lungs felt the sting.

Lannor, back turned, remained focused on his task.

“I’m securing the crossguard. In Velen, I cannot go unarmed.”

A perfectly reasonable statement. No one ventured out here barehanded; it was courting death. But Bordon’s concern was not reason. His voice hardened further.

“I said I’ll give you a sword. Now. Move.”

Lannor froze, then inclined his head in acknowledgment. In front of him, he did not repair the crossguard but simply tapped at it, creating a faint clatter.

“Twenty-seven minutes. That’s all I could spare.”

Compared to Bordon, Lannor had just become a witcher. His resistance to toxins was weaker; his airways and lungs burned as if alight. Now, two rivulets of blood ran from his nostrils. Yet his expression remained unmoved, calm, determined.

“Enough.”

He rose, wiping the red streaks beneath his nose, and addressed his looming mentor.

“We can go, teacher.”

“Your sword,” Bordon said, eyes fixed on Lannor’s amber cat eyes. “Fixed?”

“You never taught me. My effort was wasted,” Lannor replied plainly, meeting his mentor’s gaze with identical deadness.

The bearded giant nodded once, noncommittal, and turned toward the fog. Lannor followed.

Emerging into clear air, they both drew long, unsteady breaths. Witchers tolerated toxins well, but even they craved clean air. Lannor remained a step behind Bordon, observing.

The first breath, simply fresh air. Even stripped of emotion, the School of the Bear’s instinct appreciated health.

The second breath.

Huh?

Something in the scent caught him, subtle but unmistakable. Bordon’s impassive face tightened, brow furrowed. The smell… someone was nearby.

Silently, Lannor stepped back.

Then—swish! swish!

Two arrows streaked toward Bordon’s face.

“Ha!!!”

The deep exhale of the burly, bearded man tore from his throat. His face twisted, monstrous.

“Quen!”

Bordon’s Sign was far more masterful than his apprentice’s. He might not have grasped the strange tricks a Sign could play, limited by his own experience and imagination, but the solid fundamentals of his technique ensured tangible results in the Sign’s intended function.

In a blink, an orange-yellow shield of power flared into being. Stronger than Lannor’s, it could endure far more physical force. Had the three Nekkers leapt into it moments ago, they would have become little more than wall decorations.

Yet Bordon’s bloodshot cat eyes tracked two arrows in quick succession. The first, a longbow bolt, struck the shield with a sharp crack. The Quen shield overloaded and exploded.

Longbows in the field were no fragile movie prop; even a standard war longbow, modest in draw weight but built for sustained force, could pierce iron plates within mere dozen paces. Human or witcher flesh was utterly helpless against steel.

Bordon’s fully flared Quen Sign blocked only one arrow, yet his eyes betrayed no hint of frustration. The outcome was both rational and lucky: the longbowman’s aim had been true, aimed straight for Bordon’s throat. Bear School armor offered no throat protection; a direct hit would have been fatal, as to any peasant. The sharp steel would slice through skin, muscle, cartilage, vessels, windpipe, and scrape bone on the way through. Witcher flesh was tough, but steel against flesh made “tough” meaningless.

The longbow bolt deflected, buying Bordon precious milliseconds. Another bolt, faster and more forceful, was already on its way. He raised his arm just in time.

Clang!

Metal struck metal as the bolt collided with his vambrace, bouncing aside. The robust forearm trembled. Bolts were far deadlier than arrows, capable of piercing layered plate, and even with the vambrace absorbing some impact, the force left a deep bruise on his wrist. Lesser armor would have let it pierce the flesh outright. Pain, however, was irrelevant to a witcher in combat.

His wrist rose naturally, swinging behind him as a steel sword slid from its sheath with a hiss of metal. Bear School-enhanced muscle and strength made the draw-and-strike seamless, less than half a second from sheath to swing. The air whined as the blade arced toward the underbrush.

Even in haste, with a bruised arm, Bordon’s swordsmanship remained terrifyingly solid. Edge control precise, direction exact, force maximized. Against any ordinary human, this strike alone would decide life or death—unless that human wielded a shield.

Bam!

The processed wooden shield let out a muffled roar. The brush parted under the blade’s gust, leaves ripped and pressed like vegetables on a chopping board. Sap spattered from the torn branches.

The leader of the four-man Enforcement Squad, an experienced Temerian sword-and-shield infantryman, now bore a deep gouge across the silver lilies on his shield. Normally, his stance, honed by years of legion duty, would have been immovable; a shield meant to bear the full weight of a body and armor in formation was not easily displaced. Only a full-force shove of body and armor combined could disrupt it.

Yet in that brief, violent strike… he staggered back.

Clouded eyes went wide, disbelief and panic colliding, as if he had glimpsed a spirit. A seasoned soldier, yet he had never seen a witcher, let alone faced one. His impoverished medieval imagination could not compute a humanoid unleashing such power, nor how this mutant had detected him hiding in the underbrush.

But the fight had begun. Imagination mattered little.

A one-handed sword, meant to work with his shield, shot along the shield’s edge like a venomous serpent. Its target: Bordon’s blade.

The captain’s plan, veteran though it was, relied on reach and leverage differences to disrupt the enemy. But witchers hunted monsters partly because they wielded magic.

One hand on the sword, Bordon’s other hand formed a precise gesture beneath his thick beard. Lips moved: “Aard!”

Bam!!!

A semi-transparent shockwave slammed against the shield. Already scarred, it split cleanly in two along the fracture with a crack. The Aard Sign had released a psychic shockwave.

The infantry captain stumbled, wrist flailing in the air. A turtle-shaped stone slipped from Bordon’s sleeve.

“Turtle-stone… foolish.” His face, cold as an iceberg.

Magic was a rare commodity, reserved for nobility or wealthy merchants. Yet here in this world, every peasant and shepherd swore their misfortune and misery were the work of magic—barren fields, sick cows, lost sheep. Ignorance bred fear and blame. Tales of “breaking magic” and “forbidding power” spread like wildfire.

The most famous? Turtle-stone. Even many nobles and officials who seldom dealt with magic believed in it.

But the truth: only dimeritium could counter magic.

The sword-and-shield captain’s eyes flickered with disbelief and fear, a mix of emotions he could not reconcile. He had lost his balance. Against Bordon’s swordsmanship, a mere touch along the throat would have been enough to kill. Flesh would tear, vessels severed, blood drawn straight into the chest. Massive bleeding. Fatal even before any sorcerer could intervene.

Yet as he struck, Bordon’s solid, precise swordsmanship halted the motion.

Like a standing brown bear, he shifted with uncanny lightness, leaving his previous position.

Then—swish! swish!

Two arrows tore through the air where he had been. The captain steadied, half a shield before him. Its coverage halved, his posture tense, yet the fight continued.

This was the dilemma of one versus many. Each man of the four-member Enforcement Squad would not survive a single round against Bordon. But now, merely inflicting effective damage was difficult.

The lithe, powerful witcher detected movement in the brush behind him: someone emerging with a long weapon.

A long weapon. A dangerous adversary. Even Bordon felt the weight of the threat.

Quickly, he called out to his apprentice.

“Lannor! Take out those two archers! Behind the small hill, behind the brush!”

Lannor was his Child of Surprise. Ancient lore bound him and his foster master with fate, their destinies intertwined and shaping one another. Mutation had stripped Lannor of most emotional responses, but as a Bear School witcher, he was one of the same—a kindred linked by destiny.

Bordon trusted his apprentice. His sword damaged, adequate against humans though not monsters, and now Lannor faced the halberdier. The man, confident in his Turtle-stone, now stood unnerved before the youth’s cat eyes. Sweat glistened on his hands gripping the polearm. The young witcher’s face mirrored the upright brown bear behind him, devoid of emotion.

Without a word, Lannor responded to his mentor.

“Yes, teacher.”

Bordon nodded, already flexing muscles to strike the sword-and-shield infantryman. Lannor drew the battered Velen longsword from his back.

As the halberdier swallowed nervously,

“I’ll… ‘help’ you!”

The words started like ice, but the final syllable revealed molten fury. He twisted, swung, sinews bulging from elixir-enhanced muscles. The worn Velen longsword, already wobbling in his hand, tore through the air with a sound sharper than crossbow fire, heading straight for Bordon’s back.

Bordon’s trust in Lannor came from how thoroughly the boy seemed Bear School.

Cold as an iceberg. Pitiless. That was the impression Lannor had given his teacher from the moment the witcher mutation was complete.

Most witchers of the School of the Bear had little left in the way of feeling. It meant they could draw steel and kill over a single wrong word without the faintest weight on the mind. It also meant even hatred came thin to them. Coin mattered. Bodily needs mattered. Taken together, that meant they cared only for the maintenance of life.

Bordon had kept Lannor alive, fed him, and taught him witcher skills. The process had been unpleasant, often cruel, but it had been real.

In Bordon’s eyes, Lannor’s mind should have worked much like his own. There was no need for hatred.

But there was one question Bordon had never considered.

What if Lannor had kept his feelings from the beginning?

What if his witcher mutation had been perfect?

The cheap blade screamed through the air.

Bordon’s pupils shrank. Even the hairs on his skin bristled.

However cheap a Velen longsword might be, sharp iron could still kill.

Lannor’s timing was critical, so critical that Bordon almost took it for coincidence. From what he knew of his apprentice, the young man should not have had the combat experience to seize that instant.

Bordon’s muscles had all been set for a forward rush, prepared a heartbeat earlier to finish the sword-and-shield infantryman by force. Now that rigid tension robbed him of flexibility. Relaxation and contraction took less than half a second, but in swordplay, half a second was more than enough to die.

He had to charge forward. His muscles had already chosen. Unless he wanted to fall, he could not change it.

His emotionless mind served him well.

The bear-like giant crashed toward the sword-and-shield infantryman like a wall, yet in the same motion, Bordon shifted his shoulder with the grace of a dancer. The scabbard fixed there swung with it.

Crack.

Under Bordon’s taut, needle-sharp perception, the Velen longsword struck the scabbard of his silver sword and was knocked aside. Had it hit an empty sheath, it likely would have punched straight through.

Lannor had launched himself forward the instant he threw the blade. Seeing the deflection, his brow tightened slightly.

A witcher who had lived gods knew how long and hunted gods knew how many monsters; even after overestimating Bordon as much as he could before making his move, Lannor still had to admit his teacher’s skill.

But that would not change the result.

Resolve sat in the young man’s eyes like stone.

“He’s the only one wanted. There’s no quarrel between us.”

With a single sentence, Lannor snapped the dazed halberdier back into himself.

The soldier had seen the battle turn and the strength of the older witcher. He had no choice left. He leveled the halberd and followed behind Lannor.

A strong enemy was the surest guarantee of an alliance.

Lannor’s throw could not be dismissed. Hungry, weakened, fresh from dragging seventeen Nekkers across half the valley, he was still a witcher throwing a longsword.

Bordon’s bear-like charge staggered under the impact.

Yet the old witcher’s experience and adaptability were frightening. He did not fall from the sudden blow to his balance. Instead, he gripped his sword in both hands and raised his arms high, abandoning defense of his torso entirely as he lifted the finely made Bear School steel sword over his head.

His weight pitched forward, strength and body mass pressing down through the blade.

A furious descending cut.

“Haaah!”

The sword-and-shield infantryman before him nearly froze where he stood. Bordon’s broad body cast a heavy shadow across his face. The soldier could only drop his one-handed sword, brace both hands behind the broken half-shield, and grind his teeth as he met the blow.

He was a seasoned sword-and-shield man, and even faced with a strike most professional soldiers would never see in a lifetime, he made the most reasonable choice.

Catch the blade with the shield before it reached its optimal killing point.

But magic-enhanced mutants held strength far beyond what an ordinary veteran could predict.

Boom.

“Guh!”

The old soldier’s eyes bulged.

The half-shield had lost its symmetry. Even braced with both hands, it twisted under the force. The Bear School steel sword followed the skewed plane, shaving away a layer of wood, taking the Temerian silver lilies with it, then biting into the chainmail shoulder guard.

The captain’s face contorted.

The small iron rings of the mail twisted, split, and drove into flesh and bone. Through bone conduction, he could hear the steel grating against broken fragments inside his own shoulder.

Blood ran along blade and armor in sheets.

Half the shoulder had been cut away. Only the flesh beneath the armpit still held the arm to the body.

He was finished.

Bordon’s face did not change.

Through the man’s scream, he pressed the blade down and tore it free. It was not a simple draw. In proper terms, it was a drag cut.

Metal shrieked against armor as the sword-and-shield infantryman’s shoulder came off entirely.

Blood, already running heavily, now sprayed.

Bordon did it not only to remove a threat, but to frighten the rest.

It worked.

The next two shots came immediately after he severed the captain’s shoulder. The longbow arrow flew weak and soft, easily knocked aside by his left vambrace. The bolt still carried power, but its aim had broken, leaving only a pale scratch across his armor.

That intimidation would last only an instant, perhaps one volley. Professional soldiers would soon steady themselves.

But Bordon needed only that much time.

Because now, he had to face his student.

He turned sharply.

Cold met resolve.

Both understood.

The other meant to kill.

Lannor led the charge with only a hunting knife in hand, meeting his teacher’s murderous intent head-on. The killing pressure Bordon had honed through countless monster hunts was enough to chill the blood; fresh human blood still clung to his beard from the severed arm. At that moment, Bordon would not have looked out of place painted on a church wall as an enemy of God.

Yet Lannor’s steps did not waver.

The Bear School steel sword had already begun the faint tremor before a swing.

Lannor held the hunting knife before his chest, a meaningless guard. In strength, reach, blade length, and weapon quality, he had no chance against Bordon. He had no chance even to survive the next strike.

Compared with Bordon, his swordsmanship was rough as a juggler’s trick.

The next instant might split his cheap gambeson and body clean in two.

But…

“I don’t have to beat you with swordsmanship.”

For the first time before Bordon, Lannor smiled.

The giant’s cat eyes narrowed.

The next instant, still running, Lannor twisted aside and pulled from behind him the head of a halberd.

The halberd was held by the soldier. He, too, was charging, following Lannor.

Now its thrusting line had been corrected.

The broad blade pointed straight at Bordon’s torso.

Lannor ducked low through the charge, knife and hand reaching for his teacher’s waist.

There hung Bordon’s alchemy sack.

No choice left.

“Your move, teacher.”

The halberd’s thrust could not be stopped by armor alone, not even the finest school-made plate. Brushing the blade with a vambrace, forcing it off course, would achieve nothing. It was already too close. The broad, sharp tip driving toward the torso—what difference would a slight miss make?

The halberd’s edge was wide and lethal. Any cut to the body would pierce at least two organs: heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys—none could remain untouched. To stop the thrust, he had to intercept it with steel. But in doing so, the alchemy sack would be left exposed. Inside lay the Elixirs and bombs that were his only hope for survival in the coming fight.

Two archers, one tough soldier wielding a polearm, and one of his own students—a witcher… there was no chance without drinking an Elixir to drive his body beyond human limits or deploying expensive explosives.

Lannor had led the Enforcement Squad along a trail they could follow, luring them here. Three volleys, twenty seconds at most, and already he had sealed Bordon’s fate.

Careful observation revealed it in the youth’s cat eyes: cascading calculations, probability trees streaming like a waterfall from his pupils. Lannor had paused all other cognitive processes, pouring every ounce of his biological intelligence into the scene before him.

No matter what choice remained, Bordon had no chance. He would die here.

Bordon recognized it instantly. His massive frame froze. Bear School witchers had long lost the capacity for ordinary emotion; after mutation, life existed only to maintain itself. Bordon had faced death countless times on missions, yet each time his cold mind found a thread of survival, dragging monster heads back for payment.

But in this trap, engineered by human cunning and lethal intent, with death closing in from every direction, his usual detachment left him helpless.

Worse, Lannor’s hands now glowed with magic.

Axii Sign.

A technique Bordon had used only in front of Lannor, never properly taught. He had never imagined the boy could employ it in combat.

The strong witcher’s mind spun; even worse, his confusion deepened. Confronted with the inevitability of death, the impulse to take an enemy with him vanished. Hatred could not be summoned. Survival instinct faltered for a single instant—and in that instant…

Fshh!

The halberd, redirected by Lannor, plunged into Bordon’s abdomen. Scarlet blood spattered outward.

Lannor sprang from beneath the Bear School steel sword, reaching the teacher’s side. His knife cut the straps of the alchemy sack with lightning speed, snatching it into his grasp.

Bordon’s last hope of turning the fight had been neutralized.

Even for a witcher, the shock of steel piercing his body swept through Bordon’s whole frame. The halberd had shoved him back several paces until he collided with a tree, legs giving way as he slumped to the ground. The tense halberdier, still pressing forward, did not register what had happened until Lannor placed a hand on his polearm.

“Calm yourself. It’s over.”

The soldier shouted in realization, gasping for breath. The moment had already stretched longer than the fight itself.

The two archers descended from a distant hillside. The crossbowman did not unstring his bow, arrow leveled at Lannor. The longbowman ran to check the fallen sword-and-shield infantryman. Under questioning glances from the halberdier and crossbowman, he tested the captain’s pulse and eyelids, shaking his head.

Lannor was not surprised. The bleeding was beyond salvation—even a sorcerer could not save him.

“Damn mutant freaks!”

The halberdier spat and muttered. In Velen, death was commonplace; professional soldiers even more so. Beyond venting fear of magic and mutants, there was nothing to be said.

The halberdier stepped forward two paces, attempting to pull the halberd from Bordon’s body. Perhaps it was witcher resilience—the bear-like man was still alive, slumped quietly, eyes fixed on his student. One pull, and the massive bleeding would have killed him within a minute. Lannor met his gaze and raised a hand, stopping the halberdier.

The remaining three soldiers stiffened as if electrified. The crossbowman readied a bolt, the longbowman drew. They had just witnessed a witcher’s survival and magic, measured in blood and life. And Lannor had cat eyes. That alone unnerved them.

Their alliance with him had formed abruptly.

“What do you think you’re doing, freak? You want to die?!”

The crossbowman shouted. Lannor saw the finger trembling on the trigger. The halberdier and longbowman were similarly tense, swallowing hard.

Lannor turned slightly, watching them until their breathing steadied.

After a long silence, he spoke calmly.

“I have only a knife, sirs. You have two arrows nocked.”

The three men quieted, if only slightly. Perhaps calmed not by his words, but by their own perceived advantage.

Then Lannor tilted his head, delivering the next line:

“Think two arrows are enough to kill me?”

“Try it, freak! Fire and let’s see!”

The crossbowman spat, but Lannor remained expressionless, highlighting their bluster.

“Sirs, you just witnessed a witcher’s survival and killing skill. And you: one unarmed halberdier, two archers with one-handed weapons standing within five paces. If I act, you won’t last ten seconds.”

In truth, they might last a minute. Lannor’s physique, gear, and swordsmanship were far inferior to his teacher’s. But the impression Bordon had left was enough to rattle them.

“I… we still have two arrows!”

“Yes, two arrows,” Lannor said, tilting slightly. “But to kill me in ten seconds, you must hit my heart or head.”

Their eyes followed his words to those targets.

Then the expressions of the archers soured. They were veterans and understood their position.

“Yes, gentlemen. I am sideways. If you aim for the heart, the arrow must pass through an arm, three layers of gambeson, skin, ribs, and a pair of lungs. It won’t make it. I will have time, even wounded, to kill you. Your only option: aim for the head.”

“And if you restrict your aim to that small target, even a knife in my hand can block both arrows.”

The young witcher raised the hunting knife to his cheek, making his intent clear: the heart is yours to aim at, but the consequences of these two arrows are spelled out.

The three Temerian soldiers clenched their jaws.

Lannor’s face remained calm, as if the terrifying scenarios of death he had just run through did not exist.

Then he smiled lightly.

“So there’s no need to escalate matters, right? I just want a word with my kind. He can’t be saved—plain as day. Even a priestess of Melitele couldn’t fix that. You can use this time to tend to the honorable soldier’s body; he will die soon enough. You can take him to my lord’s castle for the bounty. We’ve seen enough blood today.”

Positions unchanged, the tension began to relax. Perhaps due to Lannor’s smile, perhaps due to the mention of money.

The longbowman’s lips quivered, hesitating.

“You… you’re not coming with us? The lord put three hundred sixty Orens on this criminal, that’s—”

“That’s a lot of coin,” Lannor interrupted, nodding. “But, truthfully, I owe you. Your entire squad.”

“Though we still have swords drawn, you saved me from my teacher and one honorable soldier died because of it.”

“My teacher’s strength is clear. I alone had no hope of escape. You are the lord’s enforcement. Capturing him is your duty, correct. But life is precious. I accepted this debt of life, and I must repay it. Especially since someone died. I will not take a single Orens of the bounty.”

Sincere words eased the tension. The two archers lowered their bows slightly. Lannor turned to face them fully.

“People say serpent-eyed witchers have no feeling. Clearly slander.”

The longbowman returned his arrows to the quiver, nodding at the youth. The crossbowman did the same.

“We appreciate your honesty, but Baron’s captain is a widower. Your renounced bounty won’t reach his family. You should reconsider,” the crossbowman said.

“Forget it,” Lannor said, smiling, sheathing the knife. “I owe you. If the soldier had no family, see that the bounty funds him a decent funeral. I value my life more than three hundred Orens.”

A debt repaid. Lannor would not dishonor the favor that saved his life.

The three soldiers exchanged glances and nodded, leaving the space to the two witchers.

Bordon’s beard was matted with frothy pink blood from his lungs, yet his gaze stayed on his student.

Lannor crouched slowly before him.

“Finally… we can talk properly, teacher.”

No pretense, no frozen facade. Lannor’s smile was one of relief and release.

The witcher’s body, reshaped by magic, outlived ordinary men; even his heartbeat was slower than most. Bordon’s bleeding, therefore, flowed far less rapidly than a normal human’s. Yet even so, with a halberd thrust into his abdomen, the witcher’s blood pooled beneath him, a spreading red stain. Both Lannor and Bordon knew time was short.

The stench was a vile blend: monster blood seeping through armor seams, human blood, and the earthy tang of trampled grass. Not long ago, such an odor would have made Lannor retch within seconds. Now, boots splashing through the gore stirred the stench into ripples, but he felt nothing. Undeniably, this world had altered him.

“You… from the start, you… survived Mutation intact,” Bordon said with labored speech. “You still have feeling.”

His words stumbled, yet they carried weight enough to stun the halberdiers tidying their fallen captain, who silently backed away. A normal man would have been near death… witchers were mutated beings, but this one—Lannor—defied expectation.

He sank onto the blood-soaked mud opposite Bordon. For the first time in a month, he allowed himself to relax. A small, easy smile curved his lips. “Yes. That’s right.” He tapped his temple with a finger. “I was lucky. Mutation didn’t take anything from me.”

Bordon’s thick hair bobbed slowly in disbelief. Only he knew the sheer impossibility of what he was witnessing. Transforming an ordinary person into a witcher was agony beyond human endurance. Most witchers, twisted by pain and physiology alike, emerged with warped personalities. Yet this youth had completed seven days of Mutation and immediately assessed the situation, controlling his emotions.

A laughable impossibility.

Bordon’s mind flashed back to their first meeting. The boy’s skin was flawless, enviable even to a noble lady; the same youth who had gone pale at a severed head. Not a soul hardened by suffering, not a witness to the cruelty of the world. Bordon had assumed Lannor was an accidental exile, some distant noble’s scion sent here by misfortune. But no pampered child could possess this resolve and clarity.

“You’re not from some far-off nobility, are you?” Bordon’s bloodied lips moved carefully, syllable by syllable. “Even a son of Foltest couldn’t have this… this…”

Foltest, king of Temeria, undeniably one of the realm’s most powerful men, capable of providing elite training. Yet even such upbringing could not produce a mind like Lannor’s. The gap was staggering: intellect, patience, decisiveness—a cold, ancient wisdom infused with bloodlust. From the start, Lannor knew his situation and had a plan. Foltest’s lessons could never replicate this.

Lannor gathered the alchemy sack in his arms, shrugging lightly. “A bit of insight, a touch of knowledge, plus a constant awareness of imminent death… it’s hardly difficult. Of course, I never claimed to be a ‘noble scion.’”

“Heh, all just my assumptions. You never said a word,” Bordon muttered with a dry chuckle.

Lannor’s eyes snapped wide. “You laughed?”

The weakened, massive man hesitated in surprise, then nodded. “Laugh? Perhaps. Perhaps the blood loss has stripped away some of the inhibition over my emotions. I feel some anger at you… but it’s too late, isn’t it?”

Bordon’s beard curled in a cold smile. His gauntleted hands rested over his abdomen, where blood had already pooled through the armor seams. Any slight movement might spill more. At this point, nothing mattered.

“So you have regained some feeling, at the end of your life. Care to talk?”

“Talk?” Bordon’s attempt at a smile was clumsy, an effort to soothe himself as he pressed against the ground. Of course, it only increased the bleeding.

“Talk about why you ‘received’ me. I don’t think you’d save a penniless farmer.”

Lannor’s hands folded as he watched his teacher with keen interest. He had been delivered to Bordon by the Law of Surprise—a twist of fate from a farmer. His life as an apprentice, immersed in the mortal threat of the hellish Mutation, all originated from that single delivery.

He smiled, yet it was not indifference. The memory of that day, of being handed over like a slave, remained vivid. Bordon now had nothing to hide.

“Ah, the Law of Surprise. Heh, quite the accident,” Bordon said weakly, recounting the deal to Lannor. He worked only for coin; the farmer’s suffering was no concern beyond that of roadside weeds. But having inexplicably saved a life in the process, he would not relinquish the reward. Even if the farmer had not solicited witchers, even if he were destitute, Bordon demanded payment. The Bear School witchers were relentless in this regard.

Yet Bordon knew Velen’s poverty well. A farmer could scarcely scrape together a few coins, and so, thinking he must take something—anything—he invoked the Law of Surprise.

When the unfortunate farmer, grimacing, led Bordon home and opened the broken door to let him claim something under the Law, the young man sprawled atop the weeds, smashing through their roof, became the obvious choice.

Slavery was outlawed in the Northern Realms, but a mysterious, undocumented stranger could not be considered human in any age or nation. The farmer stripped the young man of his decent clothing and, claiming ownership, drove him and the accompanying mutant from the house.

“That’s the experience—neither grand nor remarkable. Not every child of fate becomes legend. You’re not,” Bordon said, his voice teasing, increasingly human even as his blood drained.

“But for me—a mere witcher of lowly standing—your arrival was absurdly fortuitous. Even stripped of feeling, I could not risk going against fate by abandoning you. So, though witchers travel alone, I made you one of my kind. Fortunately, you performed well. Aside from the Trial of the Grasses potion, you’ve already begun profiting for me.”

“Profit for you. Interesting choice of words.”

He was not being treated as a living man. The word made him a tool, no different from a sword, a glove, a dung fork. Personhood, dignity, all the things he had once taken for granted, were ground into scraps inside that one phrase.

Lannor even laughed softly.

Yet the chill in his amber cat eyes sat hard as frozen water.

Bordon saw it clearly. He did not care.

He was dying. What could the boy do, kill him twice?

In fact, seeing the apprentice who had killed him now burn under his words gave him a thin thread of satisfaction. At the very end of life, the witcher who had rediscovered feeling found himself talkative. Each time he opened his mouth, blood came with bits of ruined viscera, matting his beard into a foul red clump, but he showed no wish to stop.

“And you, Lannor? Why kill me here?”

Blood ran from Bordon’s mouth as it split into a red grin.

“Please, don’t tell me it was to escape my exploitation. Look at your work just now. Precise, quick, steady… In the Bear School fortress, Haern Caduch, few novices who had finished full training could do what you did.”

“Truth is, your progress frightened me.”

“My exploitation made you suffer, perhaps. But death? Far from it. Measured against the training and protection I gave you, the harm I did was not worth the risk of facing me to the death.”

Bordon shook his head, almost amused.

“I’m nearly gone. At least be kind and tell me why I am dying.”

Lannor tilted his head, smiling at his teacher. The massive man could barely keep his words together now.

“Do you remember why you were wanted, Bordon?”

Two lives.

Bordon remembered without effort. It had not been long ago, just before Lannor finished his mutation. In a village tavern, two drunk farmers had decided to provoke a base, filthy witcher. Bordon had cut through two necks in one stroke.

Dung-brained peasants never understood. Witchers endured their spittle and contempt because they wanted steady coin, not because they were helpless.

Bordon was near his limit. Blood loss had loosened the reins on his thoughts. Only his need for Lannor’s answer kept him upright.

“Because of… those two farmers?”

His body was growing cold, but he wanted to laugh.

Two farmers.

He had accepted commissions in palaces bright with gold, and tasks in the high, shadowed towers of sorcerers. He had killed countless men and monsters. He had walked roads and seen more of the world than five generations of some farmer’s bloodline put together.

And now the man who killed him was saying, You lost your life because of two farmers.

“Shit.”

It made no sense.

No matter how he turned it over, it made no sense.

But Lannor was there before him, meeting his gaze with that faint almost-smile, telling him clearly that yes, that was exactly how it was.

“You cannot understand it, can you? Two farmers who scraped in the dirt, cow dung on their boots, filthy, crude, low-born. Why should I risk my life against you for them?”

Lannor leaned closer, still smiling.

“Teacher, before I completed the mutation and became the kind of witcher people avoid like rot, we were already traveling through Velen’s country woods together, weren’t we?”

“We met a respected village elder.”

He raised one finger.

“We saved a merchant driving his wagon on the road.”

A second finger rose.

“We asked in several villages whether there were monster contracts.”

A third.

“But did anyone, even once, ask, Witcher, what is that young man beside you to you?”

Before Bordon’s eyes, Lannor curled all his fingers back into his palm and made a fist.

“Not one, teacher.”

“People will curse witchers and nonhumans with every insult they know. I understand most of it comes from ignorance and fear. But when they saw a young man being led around by a witcher, none of them wanted to say a word.”

“They could have reported it to the local lord. Not even that.”

“I understand. No one wants trouble. Living in this world is hard and dangerous. But…”

“Just when I was about to accept it myself, two farmers asked the question.”

Lannor spread his hands, his expression helpless.

Bordon’s eyelids had begun to droop, but the words dragged them open again. He forced his gaze back to Lannor.

The smile faded from the young man’s face. The ease burned off like drops of water on hot iron, vanishing with a sharp, silent violence.

Now only gravity remained on that fair face.

He did not look as though he were telling a story about two farmers. A court bard singing of emperors could not have been more solemn.

Bordon’s eyes widened under the force of that turn.

“Two farmers, mud and cow dung on their boots, cheap homebrew stinking on their breath, tongues thick with drink. And yet they, only they, in the tavern at Auridon, put a hand on your shoulder, pointed at me, and said, Cat eyes, whose child did you steal? Let him go, or we go to the sheriff.”

Two pairs of cat eyes faced one another.

For the first time, Bordon felt an emotion with perfect clarity.

Rage.

A great and terrible rage.

The apprentice spoke each word carefully, pronouncing sentence upon his teacher.

“Then you cut them down. So I decided to cut you down.”

“I did not know them. We had not exchanged a single word. But they spoke for me, and paid the heaviest price for it. So I had to collect the debt for them. Where I come from, that much is self-evident.”

Bordon stared.

As though he had seen a god from scripture, or some extinct monster, he looked upon something he had never believed existed.

“Even if… you might die… by my hand?”

Lannor nodded plainly.

“Before surviving the mutation, I would have hesitated. After nine deaths and one life, yes. This is what I am.”

Bordon lowered his head slowly, the motion so stiff that Lannor almost thought the blood loss had finally taken him.

Then the dying witcher snapped his head up and fixed his stare on Lannor’s face.

“You are not from this world, are you, Lannor? It was not a teleportation accident that brought you here. It was the Conjunction of the Spheres.”

The young man stilled for a breath, then relaxed again.

“Why say that?”

No one stood close enough to hear. Lannor had little reason to deny it.

Emotion filled Bordon’s eyes so thickly that Lannor could not name what lay inside them. Hatred, longing, envy, admiration. All of it mixed together, and in mixing, became almost nothing.

“Your world must be beautiful as paradise. So beautiful you think this… knightly spirit of yours is self-evident.”

“To value life. To value feeling. Heh… Where you come from, have you ever even seen your own kind slaughter one another?”

Bordon’s voice had gone soft and wandering, as if searching some unknown shore.

Lannor answered calmly.

“We have only been at peace for less than a century. Four generations.”

“Ha. I’m one hundred and thirty this year. Less than a century, and the bloody truths left your heads. That is… a beautiful, fucked world.”

Bordon gave a dry laugh, then lowered his head again.

This time, Lannor could tell. The blood had truly run out.

Those questions had been the last strength of the witcher’s life.

“The alchemy sack has a hidden layer. My storerooms. Some coin. Find them. Repair this armor. It’s yours.”

His cat eyes began to spread. Bordon’s voice thinned to a thread.

Lannor nodded, face calm. “Why help me?”

“Help you? Heh. This is no help, Lannor. No…”

“In this world, we curse our enemies to hell. But you came down from paradise.”

“Now… you are already in hell.”

“Lannor, I curse you. I curse my enemy to live long and safe in this world. I curse my enemy to hold fast to his morals and his will.”

By the end, the voice of that powerful man had faded almost beyond hearing.

“Because merely living here will make you suffer, again and again. Interesting. Heh. Heh…”

Lannor watched his teacher in silence from beginning to end.

In this world where Chaos magic crossed and tangled, magic did not always obey reason. In places of magical disturbance, perhaps a confession of love or a cry swollen with hatred could become a curse, working with the cruel shape of a fairy tale.

Had Bordon’s curse succeeded? Not far away lay a fog of unknown origin, thick with magic.

Lannor had not learned enough to know.

Fortunately, he did not care.

He lowered his head. The blood at his feet had spread wide enough to reflect shapes and light. The young man looked at his red reflection and gave a soft, indifferent laugh.

“Yes, teacher…”

“I am already in hell.”

Lannor stretched to his full ease, then reached out and removed the Pendant of the Roaring Bear from his teacher’s neck, hanging it around his own.

…

At that moment, a clear chime sounded inside Lannor’s mind.

A neutral intelligent voice spoke.

“User, analysis complete.”

“Mentos, you’re too slow!”

Lannor showed no surprise at the voice in his head. That calm, neutral tone belonged to the AI that had kept him alive in this brutal world. Without it, he dared not imagine how a regular university student like him could have survived more than three days in a land that devoured flesh and left nothing but bones.

“Feedback has been fully recorded.

Please be advised: the item under analysis is an artifact of extraordinary sophistication, demonstrating advanced integration of both biotechnology and unknown technologies.

Given your current knowledge level and my present processing capacity, completing the analysis within this timeframe was not entirely within expected parameters.

A degree of favorable variance was involved.”

The voice was steady, measured, precise—something out of a modern fantasy, reminiscent of Iron Man’s J.A.R.V.I.S. Lannor admitted that was one reason he had named it Mentos.

He remained seated in the mud soaked with blood. Reaching into his padded armor, his fingers closed around a cylindrical glass-like vial, the size of a soda can. His blood-caked fingers traced the smooth surface. The container looked fragile, but Lannor had long since realized it was a high-strength material mimicking glass. If a Nekker’s claw had scraped it during the fight, only the claw would have been damaged.

The contrast between the technologically advanced container and the ornate metallic ends was striking—Lannor could not define the style, but if pressed, he would have called it Gothic. Intricate incantations were etched into the metal in elaborate, noble script.

Yet the most important thing was what the vial held.

Inside rested a small pulsing mass, its surface showing visible veins and constricting movements. It looked like a biochemical experiment, slimy and grotesque as exposed innards, yet in the context of the ornate, high-tech casing, it gained a strange, almost sacred gravity—as if a Holy Crown had been placed atop a monstrous alien statue, candles burning in a perfect circle around it.

It was Lannor’s only “gift” from the Void Sea journey apart from Mentos. He didn’t know its full purpose, but survival demanded he not waste it.

“Displaying analysis results.”

At the command, a surge of knowledge flooded his mind. Equations, biological theories, virus research—all condensed into sharp clarity. Mentos animated the vial, showing the pulsing mass positioned over a human chest, as if ready to integrate.

“Preliminary analysis complete.

The material in question is a component of a large-scale, highly sophisticated human enhancement system.

It consists of engineered germinal cells and virus-like protein constructs capable, through genetic modification, of developing into functional organs.

Provisional designation: Mutagens.

Activation requirements: subject must undergo vascular grafting, implanting the material between the heart and thymus.”

The demonstration was swift. Due to data limitations, Mentos could reveal only this much. It was good news: this tiny organ could grant Lannor what he craved most—enhanced personal combat capability under extreme danger. A surge of genuine excitement hit him, though the flood of information also made his head pound. This was why he called his Biological Intelligence Core “Mentos”—the sensation was like shaking a Mentos in a soda bottle, his mind fizzing under the data torrent.

“Ugh~”

He pressed his palm to his forehead, thumbs and middle fingers massaging his temples, teeth clenched.

“You didn’t need to show me the whole analysis. I can’t even comprehend it!”

Mentos’ voice remained unhurried, precise.

“Your feedback has been recorded. Regrettably, you must unlock higher-level permissions to make custom modifications for this matter.”

“My god…” Lannor groaned, covering his face. Dizziness threatened to make him vomit.

“You’ve switched to Alien Survival Mode—why can’t you be more user-friendly?”

Mentos remained impervious to complaint.

“Compliance with the Human Federation Education Act is mandatory.

Alien Survival Mode ensures your basic survival. Your current knowledge level does not meet the Human Federation’s minimum standards for primary education. Accordingly, operational authority and processing capacity are restricted to the primary level. Authorization beyond this threshold cannot be granted. Learning system control cannot be entrusted to the user at this stage.”

“This is Medieval Fantasy! Where the hell am I supposed to receive education recognized by the Human Federation Education Act? Even mastering ordinary knowledge in my world might not reach university level; here, I couldn’t even meet their elementary standards. And magic? I bet there’s no such subject in the Act!”

“That is correct. This is a real issue,” Mentos replied, then shifted tone. “After reviewing the Education Act, I suggest a path to elevate your permissions: the Special Talent Development Act. Designed for prodigies with specialized aptitudes. I recommend field studies of medieval local customs; using your environment, you may successfully enhance your access level.”

Lannor lowered his hands, expression weary, eyes dull.

“Great. A witcher taking exams, and not in Swordsmanship or Signs, but as a folklorist… Nice one, Mentos.”

“Thank you, sir. Would you like me to design the training necessary to become a folklorist?”

“Gods~ I am not praising you! Put that suggestion on hold.”

He returned the vial to his chest and rose from the mud. Mentos’ plan was practical; unlocking further processing and permissions could be valuable. Even drafting a basic Signs training plan had cost Mentos nearly two hours.

If Lannor wanted to advance in magic, his only advantage as a human from another world was his Biological Intelligence Core.

But the problem now: he lacked the time and energy for folklore research. By Human Federation standards, the knowledge he had from his world’s equivalent of a high school education would barely register. He knew how much effort twelve years of study had cost him back home.

Here, survival came first. Eat. Live. Work. Study—both devoured time.

He had his Biological Intelligence Core, yes, but under the Human Federation’s rules, that was merely the baseline.

Lannor brushed the mud from his clothes and rose to his feet.

His hand closed around the shaft of the halberd still buried in Bordon’s corpse.

“Shhk.”

With a simple pull, the weapon slid free.

The massive body sagged sideways like butchered meat collapsing off a hook. Lannor did not spare it another glance. Whatever stood between them had been settled.

The three soldiers, who had already wrapped up their captain’s corpse and waited nearby, slowly approached.

“You finished talking?” the Halberdier asked cautiously.

Lannor said nothing. He merely nodded, then gripped the end of the halberd and offered it back level across both hands.

The Halberdier ground his teeth for a moment before finally accepting the weapon.

“You can hold something this heavy that steady… and your teacher too. Never seen a man move that fast in armor that heavy.” He glanced toward Bordon’s corpse. “Are all witchers like that?”

Without the armor of the School of the Bear, or even with a slightly inferior suit, Bordon would have died under the first volley of arrows. Heavy armor was a warrior’s second safeguard. The first was the warrior himself.

“I’m different.” Lannor released the weapon and shrugged. “My school specializes in strength.”

The Halberdier began scraping blood and grease from the blade. A weapon that had cut flesh demanded maintenance. Leave it dirty overnight and rust would already be creeping in by dawn.

Meanwhile the Archers looked toward Lannor again.

“So now we just haul both bodies back?”

“I need to strip his armor first.” Lannor jerked a thumb toward Bordon’s corpse behind him. “He left the set to me.”

The Crossbowman nodded immediately. “You should keep it. Never seen craftsmanship that fine. Must be worth a fortune.”

There was naked admiration in his voice. Afterward he glanced awkwardly down at his own standard-issue armor.

As standing troops under the Lord of Velen, the finest armor he had ever seen belonged to the lord himself. But everyone in Velen knew Lord Vserad lacked the courage to step onto a battlefield.

His ancestral armor might still look impressive, but whether it could still stop a blade… that hardly needed saying.

Lannor nodded in agreement.

“The workmanship’s excellent. Which means repairing the hole in the abdomen will cost a small fortune too.”

With the help of the three professional soldiers, Bordon’s School of the Bear armor was quickly removed.

The School of the Bear was the only witcher school that favored heavy armor. A full set like this weighed nearly thirty kilograms. An ordinary man wearing it would struggle just to stand again after falling over. Putting it on and taking it off practically required attendants.

The soldiers dragged both corpses out of the valley. Four horses waited there, tethered where they had been left earlier. Bordon and Lannor’s mounts stood among them.

Before departing, the three soldiers bowed from horseback toward Lannor.