The sharp, ear-splitting blast of a horn exploded into the coastal night sky of Velen.

In this world, the alarm of any place built around violence would always be made as violent and piercing as possible.

Generally speaking, such an alarm had to be shrill enough to give everyone who heard it one clear feeling, do something now, you bastard, or die on the spot.

After all, everyone there was doing work with their heads tied to their belts. Even the most tasteless criminal ought to have that much awareness.

The horn in this camp was exactly that sort.

The crescent-shaped camp fell into chaos at once. Curses and the sounds of shoving and stumbling rose one after another.

Within five minutes, the tents housing armed men began lighting up one by one.

Taking five whole minutes just to wake people, Lannor felt that even the emergency assembly from his preschool military training had been sharper than this lot.

But considering this was a criminal gang in an ancient setting, one with no mutual trust or habit of helping one another, that reaction time was still reasonable enough.

Only for Lannor, that reaction time was already troublesome enough.

He was only a novice assassin who knew nothing about stealth or silent killing.

A Witcher infiltrating a camp, assassinating guards, avoiding exposure, rescuing hostages… every task, one after another, was already making things difficult for him.

How long had he even been a Witcher?

And now came this sudden turn for the worse. Lannor felt half numb.

Plans never kept up with changes.

Lannor’s original plan had been to quietly eliminate at least a third of the guard force, after which anything he did next would be much easier.

His conversation with Margarita had been to supplement intelligence, and in truth it had taken less than a minute and a half.

And now the alarm was sounded?

…There really was a powerful sorcerer in this camp, wasn’t there?

Almost at once, Lannor shoved the dagger in his hand back behind his waist and set his palm on the hilt of the steel sword across his back.

With his back against the wooden cage, his eyes swept tensely toward the camp.

Like a beast driven into a corner.

In the direction of the great tent at the center of the camp, a commotion began to rise. Someone there was shouting something loudly.

Lannor drew a deep breath and forced himself to remain calm.

So long as the host’s emotions stayed steady, Mentos could guarantee the speed of his thinking.

He glanced around. The people crawling out of the tents showed no sign of surrounding him.

There was only one intruder in the camp, him. If he had been discovered, a whole mob would simply have rushed over and hacked him apart.

That horn… wasn’t because they had found me?

Once he confirmed that he was not the source of the alarm, Lannor began putting his attention into the shouts from the center of the camp.

The sea wind was strong at night, and the waves were loud. But with a Witcher’s supernatural senses and Mentos filtering out the noise, Lannor still managed to catch the gist.

“Word’s come… lads! Chance to get rich… buyer’s ship… anchored offshore… work hard tonight! Move the goods!”

The Witcher’s sight, strengthened by Cat potion and corrected by Mentos, barely made out the figure shouting in the distance.

It was a man with the typical Cossack hairstyle.

Both sides of his head were shaved clean, with only a strip of hair left along the top, grown long and glossy with oil, draped down one side.

He was short and broad, less than one hundred and seventy centimeters tall, but judging by the outline of his muscles, he weighed at least ninety kilograms.

A full, powerful general’s belly strained against his animal-hide jerkin. Two black hounds crouched beside him.

Head Devourer.

It should be him.

So that power just now… had been magical communication?

Because his men had no discipline and came in by dribs and drabs, Head Devourer had to shout the words over and over before everyone heard them.

Taking advantage of that time, Lannor did not dare pause for even an instant. He broke into a run, sweeping his eyes across every wooden cage.

Tonight, whether there was a sorcerer in this camp or not, whether that sorcerer possessed the kind of power that could defeat Margarita or not…

His leather-gloved hand clenched around the leather wrapping of his sword hilt so hard it creaked under the strain.

Lannor gritted his teeth.

Even if he truly ran into that sorcerer of mighty power, he was ready to use his sword to trim the edges off the bastard’s magical shield.

Tonight, he was taking White away.

He had promised Mistress Donna.

Whoever tried to stop him would die.

The sound of his footsteps no longer mattered. The scum in the camp had heard the words “get rich,” and now they were cheering wildly.

As for the poor souls in the cages, broken by abuse and pain, they all believed the man-eaters were about to hold a feast and devour them in one sweep.

Everyone huddled and shrank into themselves. Those tortured to the point where they no longer wished to live showed expressions of release.

The children pressed together in fear, trying to draw comfort from someone, anyone, but young children could not comfort one another.

A few adults in the smaller partitioned cages reached their ruined hands toward the children in the neighboring cages and gathered the terrified little ones into their arms.

Hoping that, at least before they died, or before the children died, they could give one another the only comfort left to them.

Head Devourer’s speech of encouragement was nearing its end.

What came next should have been the allocation of work, those meant to move people would move them, those meant to stand guard would stand guard.

But before that part, the short, broad man’s face suddenly turned solemn. His already small eyes narrowed as he scanned the crowd below.

The motion seemed to be highly recognizable in the camp, because the people still cheering had their voices freeze halfway out of their throats as if someone had clamped them shut.

The heated atmosphere went cold in an instant.

The contrast between clamor and silence was so stark that even Lannor, sprinting in the distance, could feel it.

A criminal gang’s leader had this kind of authority… What was this, a bloody stage play?

The young man moved faster, his cat eyes turning constantly.

He knew he was close to being unable to hide.

“The numbers are wrong.” Head Devourer’s voice was low, utterly different from the tone he had used during the speech.

It was cold enough to make a man’s heart and liver tremble.

The two black hounds beside him shifted from half-sitting to baring their teeth and arching their backs.

“Where are the lads from the northern half of camp?”

“Why aren’t the torches moving?”

“Why aren’t the tents lit?”

Each question came louder than the last.

With every sentence, the men below took half a step back in panic.

The hounds, too, grew more eager by the moment.

“Fuck.” Head Devourer’s voice came through clenched teeth. “Someone crept into our home and none of you knew. Go find him!”

The camp, like a machine wound tight, finally began turning in a frantic rhythm.

Torches were handed out, broad areas were lit, hounds were brought forward… it looked as though these people meant to turn the northern half of the camp upside down.

At the same time, however, Head Devourer had also judged that the number of intruders could not be large, so the money could not be delayed.

A group of roughly twenty men was sent toward the prison quarter.

They were to seize the captives, board the boats, and move the goods.

Two teams holding torches advanced in two directions through the camp like two long dragons.

At that pace, even searching the entire camp would take less than ten minutes.

And it was at that very moment that Lannor finally saw, in the corner of a large wooden cage, the child with the slightly oversized head.

A frightened child’s eyes look like a fawn’s.

White stood among a group of children about his own age. Mass panic was not something a child could resist.

Even if that child had already known hardship.

His clothes, old but washed clean by Mistress Donna and stitched with careful, close seams, were now stained, filthy, and pulled out of shape.

That slightly oversized head of his turned this way and that in his anxiety, and the instinct to survive made him try, uselessly, to gather more information through his senses.

Humanity’s hunger for light was, in large part, a terror of losing visual information.

In a sense, information was the guarantee of life.

Lannor did not hesitate for even a moment. In truth, just seeing White alive and unharmed eased the nerves that had been stretched in him to their limit.

The boy was all right… thank the gods.

But at the same time, an even sharper sense of crisis struck him as the two long chains of torchlight moved closer.

The boy was alive, but the situation was dire.

Lannor stood before the door of the large wooden cage that held White.

The cage was made of logs as thick as an adult man’s upper arm, lashed together again and again into rows.

Unlike the prison cells in the costume dramas Lannor had watched as a child, the gaps between these stakes were not even wide enough to put a hand through.

Dense and solid.

The wood had been felled not long ago, still rich with moisture. Though it could not compare with steel in hardness, it had excellent toughness. Even with a great axe, cutting through a single log would likely take some time.

The cage door was also made of lashed wooden stakes, and the lock matched Mentos’ prediction.

Even man-eaters knew to put an iron lock on valuable goods.

Lannor stood before the door with his lips pressed tight, staring at the lock.

He did not know how to pick locks. But at this point, with the person he wanted to save right in front of him, to be stopped by a lock would be too absurd.

So the Witcher held his left hand three or four centimeters above the iron lock.

“Igni.”

Power became an orange-yellow searing current, just as it had when Lannor had worked on his own sword.

The iron lock absorbed a great amount of heat in a short time, until it gave off an orange-red glow like metal in a forge.

As expected, after a moment of stunned silence, the children inside the wooden cage began to scream.

Perhaps from fear. Perhaps from the excitement of seeing hope. But either way, asking a group of children nearly frightened sick to stay quiet at a moment like this was not realistic.

White glimpsed the newcomer’s face in the glow of the power. Though the Elixir had made that face look fierce and terrifying.

There was no doubt. He recognized Lannor, and was overcome with joy.

No matter what Lannor became, in Little White’s heart, he was first of all a good man.

White had once thought that if he could help Lannor gather herbs, perhaps they might even become friends.

Donna had taught him that if one side only took, or only received, then they could not be called friends, because the two were not equal at all.

Only by helping each other could people be called friends.

That was why White had wanted so badly to be of help to Lannor.

The twenty-odd men already heading toward the prison area first saw the firelight of power, then heard the children’s cries, and at once understood that the problem in the camp was here.

They shouted for the searchers on the other side to come over and box him in from both ends.

White had just cried out in surprise, “Lannor!”

But right after that, the long chains of torchlight came rushing closer, and the joy on his little face quickly turned into panic.

Yet the panic lasted only a moment.

This child, not even ten years old, became resolute in that instant.

He rushed out from the cluster of children that had given him some sense of safety.

“Go! Lannor! Run!”

He ran straight up in front of Lannor and slapped the wooden bars, shouting.

“They’re coming! Dozens of them! You run fast, right, Lannor? I saw you run faster than the wind! You can escape! Turn back now, you can still escape!”

White was so anxious he was nearly crying.

He did not know what fate awaited him, but even now, he was still willing to let one person get away from danger.

And Lannor was even more anxious than he was.

Power poured from his hand. The bolt of the iron lock was far thicker than a sword blade.

Under that pressure, as he tried to heat it to the point of softening, sweat slid all the way from Lannor’s forehead to the tip of his nose.

“Shut up… shut up! Whether you get saved is for me to decide! You’re just a brat, so be a good brat and crouch on the ground crying for your mum and dad!”

But at that moment, Mentos came out with a warning too.

“Sir, calm down! You must do everything you can to remain calm! The power flow in your hand is already on the verge of losing control!”

The footsteps behind him were drawing closer and closer. His heart felt as if it would leap out of his chest.

One step. Just one step and he could take White away. Only this step left.

Anxiety, fear of failure, fear of the power that had defeated Margarita, fear of accidents… unstoppable negative emotions surged like a tide, yet at this precise moment he had to remain calm.

He had to keep the output of power steady.

Lannor felt as if his brain were about to burst.

With a hiss, a drop of sweat from the tip of his nose fell onto the iron lock and instantly vanished into white steam.

The temperature was enough.

With a clean ring, he drew the steel sword. Lannor bent his body backward to the extreme, while keeping the steel sword raised above his head.

The muscles in his arms swelled abruptly. The armor buckles were pulled taut in an instant and groaned under the strain.

“An iron lock… today, not even plate armor gets to stop me!”

His spine fired in an instant, and the School of the Bear swordsmanship whipped the steel sword down like a lash.

The cold flash of that instant seemed to dim even the approaching torches.

The blade bit into the iron lock’s bolt. The lock, roasted red-hot, even burst out forge-like sparks under the cut.

Steelcutting!

In truth, the structure of the iron lock was already close to a solid block of iron. A few millimeters of plate armor could not compare with it in localized strength at all.

But under Lannor’s furious downward strike, even that block of iron was split open by force.

The Witcher had no time even to take a breath. He tore the door open, tucked White under his arm, and immediately fled south.

The person he had wanted to save was already at his side, but Lannor had no room for feeling anything.

Two bolts shot in from the distance.

They did not land on Lannor’s body, but on the ground in front of him.

If he wanted to go forward, he would have to take two arrows.

Lannor stopped at once.

Right now, one of his arms held a person, while the other held a sword.

Facing two bolts, he could not use Signs, nor could he block one with a vambrace and the other with his sword.

Enemies surrounded him on every side. If even one arrow struck and hampered his movement, everything would be finished.

But those two arrows also let the Witcher discover a deeply unwelcome fact.

“These bastards… aren’t man-eaters!”

This was not useless repetition of a conclusion he had already reached. Lannor had realized that the men blocking him now were on an entirely different level from man-eaters in combat quality.

To put it simply… they knew very well how to use numbers against one man.

“Mutant, hello there!”

A man holding a two-handed hammer swung it and charged in laughing.

His movement connected perfectly with the two arrows that had forced Lannor back.

Before the Witcher had even planted his feet after stopping, the two-handed warhammer was already sweeping across at him.

Another man with a longsword brought down a chop from the side, aiming at Lannor’s back.

The angle was strange, because Lannor’s heavy armor would most likely make the longsword scrape down along the plates without reaching flesh.

But the moment that sword came down, the tension in Lannor’s expression was no less than when he had been heating the iron lock.

That cut was not meant for Lannor… he was trying to cut off Little White’s entire lower half.

A heavy hammer in front, a longsword behind. Lannor had no way out.

He could only fling Little White, whom he had just rescued, off to the side.

The School of the Bear steel sword came across his chest. With a clang, the heavy hammer sent Lannor flying.

That bastard had swung the hammer in a full circle before bringing it in, building up all its momentum.

The longsword behind him lost White as its target and burst a great spray of cotton from Lannor’s padded surcoat.

But just as Lannor had estimated, it did not reach flesh.

The wooden door he had just pulled open took Lannor’s full impact with a heavy thud.

Many of the vines and leather strips binding it snapped apart.

Lannor lay on the ground for several seconds, unable to rise.

His chest had taken a hammer blow. If not for his School armor and that last interception, splinters of his sternum would have punched through his organs.

Even so, Lannor lay there with his mouth open, unable to draw breath for a long while.

Blunt force countered armor.

They worked well together, far better than man-eaters who had eaten their brains rotten.

Lannor estimated in his mind how troublesome these opponents were.

Just now, only four men had acted, and they had already forced the Witcher into taking a heavy hammer blow head-on.

And more than twenty men had come to the prison quarter to move the goods.

That did not include the crowd who would soon find no intruder in the northern half of the camp and come running at their companions’ calls.

If not for this change, Lannor would have slit their throats in their sleep.

Fuck.

For criminals, they never hesitated to use hostages as leverage.

But perhaps because children truly were worth money, and because they had enough confidence in their numbers and fighting strength, the men who came to move the goods did nothing to Little White. They only drove him aside, waiting to kill Lannor first before loading him onto the boat and selling him off.

“A mutant saving people? Now that’s a wonder!”

The hammerman laughed as he walked over, but the two-handed warhammer in his hands did not pause because of his words.

He swung it straight for Lannor’s back as the Witcher lay on the ground.

“How much did they pay you? Go on, tell me!”

Thud!

The head of that hammer alone weighed more than two and a half kilograms. Add the leverage of the long haft and the momentum gathered through the swing.

Even though Lannor rolled away from where he had been, the hammerhead still struck the sand with a dull, heavy boom.

Mid-roll, the Witcher’s steel sword shot upward like a viper.

Its target was the hammerman’s exposed belly.

Even with his force awkward during the roll, Lannor was confident he could let this bastard see his own intestines.

But the reason the hammerman dared leave himself wide open while swinging a warhammer was that he had plenty of companions on his side.

With a clang, a longsword thrust out from the hammerman’s side and landed right across Lannor’s line of attack.

“Get down!”

There was also a shield-bearer. He roared behind his shield and charged in, meaning to crush Lannor to the ground with it.

The three men’s coordination still could not compare with professional soldiers, but the same truth held, they had numbers. So Lannor’s rhythm was completely suppressed.

Fortunately, unlike the time Bordon had been surrounded and killed.

This time, the three men attacking had completely blocked the crossbowmen’s line of fire… no, they did not seem to have that concept at all.

So Lannor was free to use the left hand that could cast Signs.

An orange-red glimmer of magic flashed before his palm.

“Igni!”

Lannor changed the method of power output, and the Sign’s expression changed with it, from focused heating into a broad wave of tangible flame.

A fan-shaped surge of fire swept toward the three men.

The three, who had never seen Witcher Signs before, widened their eyes at once, their pupils reflecting instinctive fear of flame.

The shield-bearer’s first reaction was to duck his head behind the shield. That was a wise decision.

Human flesh was not like a monster’s. Plain human skin had no resistance to fire at all.

The hammerman and the swordsman broke into horrifying screams the instant the wave of fire caught them.

“Aaaah!” x2

When the flame passed, the exposed skin on both men had reddened over wide patches. The red looked, at first glance, no worse than a few slaps, hardly remarkable.

But in less than five minutes, fluid would pool under those broad red patches, raising huge and terrible blisters.

Under the current sanitary conditions, infection was inevitable. That was no different from a death sentence.

Had they worn more clothing, instead of open animal-hide jerkins, this Igni Sign would never have worked so well.

After all, magical flame came fast and vanished fast.

The shield-bearer, for instance, showed no visible effect at all after merely pulling himself back behind his shield.

The hammer and longsword slipped from hands that could no longer hold them through the pain, falling onto the sand.

Those two could already be counted out.

But just as Lannor meant to step forward and lightly draw his sword point across their throats.

Three shield-bearers slammed their still-screaming companions aside and drove their shields toward Lannor.

The combined force of three men was not something the Witcher could block. He was knocked backward at once.

And while he was in the air, two bolts had already been fired.

Lannor’s cat eyes narrowed to a line in an instant. His free left hand struck the ground, and the buckles linking his armor snapped taut.

With the strength of one hand alone, he drove a body weighing more than a hundred and fifty kilograms in motion.

Wearing heavy armor, he completed a backward handspring on the ground.

One bolt shot straight past. The other, during the flip, struck him in the side.

That was a position Lannor had deliberately adjusted. There, aside from the padded surcoat, he also had an external plate, and beneath that plate was the mail that formed the main body of the armor.

It looked like a weak point, but in truth it was terribly hard.

The bolt pierced the quilted layer easily, struck the plate with a muffled ding, then became tangled in the burst cotton padding and hung crookedly from Lannor’s body.

After Lannor landed, his side bent inward slightly without him meaning it to, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

Even with armor stopping it, the force of the bolt still punched deep into his organs.

But the sword-and-shield men already rushing toward him could not help but halt for a moment at the sight, eyes widening.

If it could stop a bolt, it had to be heavy armor.

And this man… had just performed a one-handed backflip wearing a full suit of it?

“That’s heavy armor! Bring more bows and crossbows!”

Several of them looked at one another, nodded, and shouted back.

Fighters who knew how to coordinate were not fools. They had no desire to play at close combat with a tin can that could do a one-handed backflip.

Since they had bows and crossbows, and could shoot him dead from afar, why risk their lives?

Raise shields. Swing swords. Limit his movement. That was enough.

The words of the front-line fighters stirred a clamor behind them.

The crossbowmen stood far away, and in the present lighting they could not see clearly what had happened after the bolt hit.

But everyone had seen Lannor’s emergency flip.

The moment the words heavy armor came out, they were all startled.

Then came the laughter of hunters spotting worthy prey.

To humans, the body of a brown bear was terrifying too.

But before a hunting party moving in a pack, the bear’s struggle and fury were merely part of the “pleasure” of the hunt.

Some were even excitedly arguing over who would get to shoot how many arrows, eager to claim the right to hunt this “bear” named Lannor.

“Hah… hah…”

The Witcher half-crouched and slowly retreated, breathing hard.

Sweat ran from his forehead all the way into the corner of his eye.

The enemy’s numbers, their cooperation, their pressure without the least gap, even with a Witcher’s body, his stamina was nearly at the bottom.

Those cat eyes roamed over the front, searching for a turn that might lead to victory.

White had been driven back into the wooden cage, kicked inside by a man.

The little brat stood in the cage, crying as he waved at Lannor.

He was not trying to make the Witcher come save him.

He was trying to tell the Witcher to run.

“Is he stupid?”

I’m the only one here who can save him, and he wants me to flee?

How does someone like that even exist?

Hah. It is exactly because fools are always like this that I never listen to fools.

Thud.

His retreating step struck a wooden cage.

Lannor leaned his back against it, keeping it from being exposed to the enemy.

“Sorceress.”

Panting, Lannor spoke to the person inside the wooden cage behind him.

“Care to try struggling a little?”

Margarita Laux-Antille.

One of the most powerful women in the world, and one of the most beautiful.

Noble blood and peerless magical wisdom had given her the station she held today.

But now, both her calves had been stripped of great amounts of muscle. Her body was filthy and stank, and she could only curl up in a wooden cage with the dry bones of her own student.

A high fever burned through her without fading. In truth, to have survived for so many days with infected wounds like these already showed how far beyond ordinary people a top sorceress stood in magic and constitution.

But it still meant little. The fever and the pain of rotting wounds tormented her, leaving her unable to cast.

This was why kings who held great power treated magic with a certain equality.

Ignorant fools thought sorcerers possessed power enough to overturn heaven and earth, even to turn an entire knightly order to ash on an open battlefield.

But those who knew the truth understood clearly that to keep a sorcerer from casting, aside from expensive dimeritium, one might need no more than a bout of dysentery.

Diarrhea, vomiting, cramps… those who dared force a spell in that condition usually ended up buried while still at the Academy, killed by the backlash of power.

Of course, the more likely result was that they simply could not draw upon the Chaos magic scattered through the world at all.

The foundation of spellcasting was absolute concentration.

Unless a spell had been turned into an instinctive reaction like breathing, a single lapse of attention would let violent Chaos magic twist the sorcerer into something best left undescribed.

Powerful sorcerers with abundant resources made many preparations to keep themselves in proper condition.

Anti-toxin potions, anti-plague potions, painkilling salves, magical amulets… ordinary people could not imagine how much coin sorcerers spent on such things.

But now, Margarita had nothing by her side.

So that noble Margarita, beautiful Margarita, powerful Margarita…

For all this time, she could only remain in a cage like a hen waiting for the cleaver.

She had nearly accepted that she would die as “food.”

Until she saw a young Witcher return.

The camp had already dissolved into chaos. Armed men holding torches converged on the small Witcher like long dragons of flame.

From inside the cage, Margarita could only see Lannor’s profile from below.

Firelight fell across that foreign-featured face, and unexpectedly, it showed neither panic nor regret.

Instead, he only looked calmly at the enemies laughing without restraint.

As if he truly believed he could carve a bloody road out of this place.

What a joke. He was only a Witcher.

No… Margarita gave a bitter smile as she remembered how wretched Lannor had looked when he first came to her cage.

Blood all over his head and face, and a store of common knowledge about sorcerers that amounted to nothing.

His skill was unexpectedly good, but the most important knowledge was a complete mess.

He was only an apprentice who had not even completed his training.

Expecting an apprentice to cut his way out of a camp full of armed enemies? She truly must have lost her mind.

And yet, inexplicably… when that little apprentice said to her, “Care to try struggling a little?” a strange sense of trust welled up in her.

He would not die here.

Power? A hidden card? Or… a curse?

She did not know.

Margarita lowered her head. Tormented by pain and fever, she could not even cast properly now, let alone probe the principle behind it.

But… since you are not simple, then let us try.

“What do you want me to do? I will say this first, in my current state I can no longer…”

“Is it ‘cannot cast,’ or ‘casting is restricted’? Be clear!”

Before Margarita could finish, Lannor let out a low growl.

He knocked aside one arrow with the armor on his wrist, then cut another in half in midair with his sword.

The sequence of movements drew startled cries from the enemy, and made them even more interested in this “bear hunt.”

Lannor did not believe one of the world’s finest sorceresses could be restrained so thoroughly that she had lost all ability to cast.

Even if this camp truly had a powerful sorcerer of the highest order, the gap between one peak and another should not be that vast.

Margarita was surprised by the sharpness of his thinking.

A man who did not even possess common knowledge about sorcerers had actually noticed the difference between those two states in such a short time?

“I can only cast a few cantrips right now! Do you understand cantrips? Weak, like your Signs, and I can’t even hold them for twenty seconds!”

That was precisely why Margarita had been trapped here.

Twenty seconds. She could take a few lives with that. But that would only make her own end worse.

Yet Lannor, back pressed against the cage, grinned as if a burden had been lifted.

“Twenty seconds… even ten is enough.”

“What did you say?”

Margarita thought she had misheard.

Ten seconds? What could ten seconds do?

Lannor did not answer her confusion.

“Come on, sorcerer. Put a shield on me.”

Put a shield on him? He meant a power barrier?

Margarita found the phrasing interesting, plain and easy to understand, yet oddly relaxed.

But now… was this truly the time to be relaxed?

No matter. The sorceress furrowed her brow, doing everything she could to shut out the pain of her flesh. She gathered her consciousness for a brief moment and drew upon the disordered Chaos magic.

A spherical shield, like warped air, covered Lannor and the wooden cage around him.

A bolt struck it at that very moment, and the wooden shaft snapped with a crisp crack.

Lannor slowly knelt on the ground.

It was the meditative resting posture of a Witcher, but at the same time… it was also the posture in which they absorbed medicinal force most easily.

“If I get you out this time, will Aretuza pay me?”

Lannor pulled two small bottles from the Alchemy Sack, looked back, and asked the sorceress with a smile.

Margarita’s face was already twisting from the effort of maintaining the shield.

The shield had ten seconds left. Outside it, enemies were still laughing as they fired bolts, or came running with longswords and warhammers in hand.

But the Witcher did not even glance properly at them.

Margarita pressed her lips together. Even with the magical face cream hiding her charm, others could still sense the fullness of those lips.

She prided herself on having seen most of the people on this continent who could be called noble.

The nobles of the southern empire, the nobles of the northern kingdoms, she had seen them all.

But someone who placed himself in danger for others, and in doing so did not speak in righteous declarations, did not claim it as some lofty honor.

Instead, he was light, at ease, and utterly unconcerned… she had never seen such a person.

Was this the “knightly spirit” of his homeland? Or the “knightly spirit” of Witchers? Margarita could not understand it.

But she understood one thing.

You are not doing this for glory that shines before the world, are you, Witcher?

You are simply doing what you want to do.

“You will be a friend of Aretuza.”

The sorceress looked seriously into those cat eyes.

“In the name of Margarita Laux-Antille!”

The young Witcher laughed aloud, raising the hand that held the bottles as if raising a cup.

“Hahaha, what an honor. Then in your name as well, cheers, madam!”

Like a toast. Once the words were spoken, the two bottles were already empty.

Black, ink-dark toxins climbed up his cheeks along the veins.

When he opened his eyes, there were no amber vertical pupils left in those eyeballs.

Only a deep, impenetrable black.

Elixirs left behind by Bordon.

Enhanced Thunderbolt, and enhanced Blizzard.

The former could markedly strengthen the muscles, and thus increase striking power.

The latter, when adrenaline was flooding the body, stimulated the nervous system to create an overstretched sense of time, something like bullet time.

When he drank both Elixirs at once, even a Witcher’s tolerance could no longer bear it.

The violent toxicity began damaging him continuously.

When Lannor lowered his head, a drop of blood fell from his nose, and on the sand it gave off a corrosive hiss.

The protective shield the sorceress had raised began to flicker unsteadily.

The enemy clearly noticed this as well. The instant the power protection collapsed, six bolts came shooting toward Lannor.

Three of them, because of poor timing, either struck or grazed the last remnants of the power shield and were knocked aside.

The remaining three passed just along the crumbling edge of the shield and flew inside.

The crossbowmen were already smiling in celebration the moment the bolts left their strings.

A few were even preparing to clap one another’s hands, marking this rare “hunt.”

A kneeling posture, eyes closed besides. To ensure a hit, all three of them had aimed their shots at the largest part of the body.

No one could dodge from that posture. No one.

But very quickly, their smiles froze.

Then those smiles turned, just as quickly, into incredulous shock.

A dark blur flashed in front of Lannor, and the three bolts were caught directly in his hand.

His wrist turned. The halted bolts were given motion again.

The men rushing forward, ready to break the power shield with longswords and great hammers, were struck cleanly.

Lannor’s throwing strength naturally could not match a bow or crossbow, but the villains rushing up wore no armor.

A bolt did not need much force to enter the human body.

Three screams, then the sound of bodies hitting the ground.

But it still was not over.

“Where did he go?! Who saw where he went?!”

The crossbowmen shouted in astonishment.

They had lost track of the figure who, a moment earlier, had still been kneeling.

On that stretch of sand, only two impact-shaped footprints remained.

Lannor’s figure was heavy and solid, but his speed now made him seem almost like a figure cut from paper.

Thunderbolt strengthened the muscles. Aside from increasing attack power, the leg muscles affected by it could of course provide greater speed.

Blizzard made Lannor feel as if his vision had entered slow playback.

The enemy’s coordination and chained attacks, which had looked smooth before, were full of holes to him now.

The crossbowmen’s line of sight struggled to follow him. With two sharp twangs, their bolts could only strike the footprints Lannor had left behind.

“Can’t… can’t keep up… why can’t we keep up?!”

The speed at which they turned their crossbows could not even match Lannor’s movement.

The villains responsible for close combat were all old hands.

Though they stood close enough that their vision was narrower than the crossbowmen’s, the instant the laughter of the shooters behind them stopped dead, they realized something was wrong.

Expecting loyalty among villains was laughable.

Among them, the swordsmen and hammermen without shields immediately tried to move behind those who had them.

Some went further still, even trying to snatch shields straight out of others’ hands.

In cold-weapon combat, the security a shield gave a man was second only to reliable comrades and armor.

These villains, wearing nothing but animal-hide jerkins, now wanted shields as if gone mad.

They had all seen the wrongness of Lannor’s build and speed.

No one wanted to face that kind of monster.

The problem was… Lannor very much wanted to face them.

Shhk!

The sound of blood spraying from a throat made men’s hearts turn cold.

It was a shield-bearing fighter. He now clutched futilely at his own throat, but blood kept pouring from between his fingers and out of his mouth.

The shield… did nothing?!

No one fought over shields anymore. After their eyes widened for a single instant, the close-combat villains did not even dare turn back for a second look.

They ran backward like madmen, wanting only to get farther from that mutant.

“This isn’t right, this isn’t right… he’s not human! He’s a monster!”

That was what they shouted.

In the face of common sense being shattered, villains who had thought victory certain could collapse in one or two breaths.

A skilled fighter with a shield, throat cut while the shield remained intact… how was one supposed to explain that?

A shield’s protection was a surface. A blade’s attack was a line.

So long as you faced the enemy directly, a shield-bearer did not need to care where the opponent’s blade came from, or whether the strike was real or a feint.

Just set the shield.

Come on, cut at it.

A shield was fixed to the arm, and the speed at which an enemy circled to change position could never match the speed at which you moved your arm.

In other words, in a one-on-one fight, a shield should protect you completely.

Except in one situation.

In Lannor’s homeland, “masters” of martial arts always had a demonstration segment. They would have a disciple throw a punch slowly, claiming it was so the audience could see the breakdown of the movement.

Then they themselves would respond at normal speed, or even with extra speed and force, beating the disciple with a chain of techniques.

Afterward, they would say, “The power of our forms lies here. Did everyone see clearly?”

…With a speed gap like that, any ordinary person watching could come up with dozens of counters on the spot, couldn’t they?

The terror of using a sword to cut a shield-bearer’s throat lay precisely in this, someone truly lived in a world running at one and a half times speed.

I can circle around you faster than you can swing your arm.

Where did you find the courage to stand before me?

That inhuman speed and reaction truly broke the enemy’s courage.

All told, since Lannor had entered the camp, he had assassinated ten men, and now killed six or seven more head-on.

That was already around a thirty percent casualty rate.

At the start, with their opponent alone, the villains had possessed a tremendous psychological advantage. But a casualty rate around thirty percent… even in Temeria’s professional army, few units could withstand that.

For a band of thugs gathered together by criminal profit, when Lannor was being suppressed, they could ignore the casualty rate.

The deaths in the ambush could be treated as accidents. No need to care.

Then they could laugh and prepare to butcher the young man.

But when they discovered that their advantage in violence could no longer hold, that casualty rate suddenly pressed down on their reason like a mountain, becoming unacceptable.

“Move! Move! Let me go! I’m going first!”

Without the close-combat men holding the front, even the crossbowmen, whose overall quality was higher, were swept into panic.

The order among the armed thugs was collapsing.

A camp with more than fifty armed fighters would have been a force not to be underestimated in most lands of the world.

Now, they had been broken by one Witcher.

On the distant platform, Head Devourer narrowed his eyes and frowned as he watched the camp gradually dissolve into chaos.

At first, he had thought that in no more than three minutes, Lannor’s head would be delivered to him by his men.

After all, it was only a little rat that had slipped in.

But immediately afterward, after Lannor released Igni, burned two men over wide areas, and displayed physical ability far beyond the ordinary.

Head Devourer had picked up his twin axes and begun moving toward the prison quarter.

The man’s fighting power was almost comparable to certain famed knights.

He knew very well what sort of goods his own men were.

He did not care whether casualties were heavy or light, but those casualties might become the surviving men’s excuse to demand a larger share.

That, he was unwilling to accept.

So he would rather take the field himself, if it meant ending the fight quickly.

But after a mere twenty seconds, Head Devourer carried his twin axes straight back into his large tent.

The two black hounds followed at his side. The moment he entered, Head Devourer first kicked the boiled human head off the table, and the hounds happily began gnawing at it.

In truth, he had always thought using human flesh-eating to proclaim one’s own ferocity was damned stupid.

But there was no helping it. To make money, one had to compromise a little. So the heads had to be brought over, but the dogs could eat them.

“Ledgers, cargo bills, receipts, letters, and the jewels… mm, all here.”

The short, broad man tucked the twin axes behind his waist, looking every bit like a standard warrior from the Skellige Isles.

But what he muttered under his breath, and what his hands sorted through, were more meticulous than the most serious accountant in a Novigrad trading house.

Before long, everything had been checked and tied into a small bundle. Head Devourer slung it over his back and walked out.

Head Devourer, Ubank. He took his two loyal hounds with him, and the small bundle on his back.

Lightly packed, he walked out of his own tent.

The neat, ready look of him made one wonder whether he had prepared this from the very beginning.

Outside the tent, he had only moments ago stood on that platform and promised rich rewards, whipping a pack of bloodthirsty, vicious thugs into cheers.

But now, no one cared about the platform that symbolized the chief’s status.

The thugs had been frightened out of their wits.

They were shouting and running about like headless flies, so nervous they looked ready to cut each other down.

This was what was called a rout.

In Lannor’s homeland, in ancient times, it had another name, panic spreading through the camp.

“Tch, tch.”

Ubank clicked his tongue, looking at his camp falling into chaos with particular regret.

He had no intention of stepping out to reestablish command.

That thing that was neither man nor ghost, that Witcher, was still killing at random.

Still killing.

Like a damned shadow.

Step out and command now, and if the Witcher caught sight of him, he might charge straight over and cut him down with one stroke.

Who here could stop him?

Besides, when a rout happened, expecting the camp to calm itself from within was less reliable than kneeling down and praying to the gods on the spot.

Unless an armed force from outside the camp intervened by force, a routed camp would not grow calm until everyone was either dead or had fled.

What was rather strange, though, was that Ubank, as the leader of the camp, showed only a very limited amount of… regret for the force that was about to be destroyed.

Not grief. Merely regret.

As if what was about to collapse was not his life’s work, but only a convenient tool he had been using.

“Hey! Old Hanson! Stop, stop a moment!”

Head Devourer first tucked the valuable little bundle deeper beneath his clothes, then looked around and called someone over.

A white-haired, bearded old man running about like a headless fly stopped.

His lost, panicked eyes regained a measure of reason the moment he saw Ubank.

“Chief!” Hope suddenly rose in his eyes.

A leader. No matter what kind of leader, no matter his quality or character, there had to be someone leading. That was what a confused crowd desired most.

But before he could continue, Ubank cut him off.

“Looks like you’ve calmed down. Good. Come on, let’s find a few more good lads. We need to get the goods to the pickup point offshore, and quickly.”

With the two hounds following at his feet, Ubank kept walking as he gave instructions.

The quick pace of the exchange left Old Hanson, who had only just been confused and terrified, a little dazed.

“What? Chief, we’re leaving the camp?”

“The camp?” Ubank stopped, then turned back to look at Old Hanson in surprise, as if looking at a child making trouble.

“Have you gone stupid, Old Hanson? We only gathered together to earn a mouthful of food. Who knows who, eh? In this state, what is there left to save? Look after yourself.”

“The camp’s gone. The men are gone. But we still have to think about what comes next, don’t we? Men have to eat, and eating takes coin. Come on, listen to me. We pull together a few lads who still have their heads on straight, and while that Witcher’s killing far away from here, we hurry to the prison area, grab a batch of goods, and take them to trade.”

“We can’t take all the goods, true, but now we don’t have to split the money with so many people either, do we? Still a profitable bit of business. Then we have the buyers carry us a stretch away from here. Once we have coin, where can’t we live?”

The words were logical, clear, and concise, in sharp contrast to Head Devourer’s coarse, savage appearance.

Even Old Hanson, who knew barely a few written words, found his calm again under that speech.

“Makes sense, makes sense…”

The old man muttered under his breath.

“My two sons should still be alive. I’ll bring them in. You give me one more share.”

Ubank looked at Old Hanson with unexpected approval.

Not bad, old bastard.

Only once you’re safe, and need men to make money, do you remember you’ve got two sons… that heart’s hard enough.

No wonder you lived this long.

“Fine. We all go find men, then haul goods to the little boats at the harbor. Whoever brings the goods gets the coin for them. Fair as fair can be. But there’s one bit of advice I ought to give you…”

“You say it. I’m listening!”

The old man quickly looked at Ubank with eager eyes. At that moment, Old Hanson trusted his leader’s wisdom completely.

“See those two wooden cages?”

Ubank put a hand on Old Hanson’s shoulder and pointed him toward two cages in the prison area.

One was the small, separate cage holding Margarita. The other was the large wooden cage White had been kicked back into.

“The people in those two cages, we don’t touch any of them. You saw that Witcher just now, didn’t you? Fucking kills men like chickens. Terrifying, that. I’ve seen it now. He came for the people in those two cages. Neither of us touches them. We’re here to make money, why lose our lives over it?”

“Right! Right! I’ll go around them, I swear!”

Old Hanson agreed again and again, then turned and plunged back into the chaos, searching for his two sons.

Ubank also took his two hounds and began gathering the men he needed.

Because at this moment, Lannor could clearly feel his body being damaged by the overdose toxicity of the Elixirs.

He wanted to inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy before the Elixirs wore off.

After the effect ended, he would certainly collapse. The best outcome would still be temporary loss of strength, so he had to create a safe environment during this window.

So even if he moved away from the prison area, he had to hunt down the remaining armed thugs in the camp.

That gave Ubank an opening.

The short, broad man gathered three more helpers and was now dragging the children from a large wooden cage onto a small boat.

When he passed Margarita’s small wooden cage, he even bent slightly, with rather gentlemanly courtesy, toward the sorceress whose head was swimming from forced spellcasting.

At the harbor, two groups together had brought nearly twenty children to the small boats.

Old Hanson still wanted his sons to make another trip, urging them to bring a few more.

But Ubank, who was also at the harbor, saw the firelight at the edge of the camp growing brighter and brighter.

That firelight was wrong.

That was Head Devourer’s first reaction.

The Witcher had used his magic to set fire before, but that had been on the beach beside the prison area. He had not set fires inside the camp.

And now, though he had killed his way into the camp, using a sword was far more efficient for him at the moment than using fire.

Judging by the shape of that firelight, it did not look like a disorderly blaze spreading, but more like… a formation?

That Witcher has companions.

Ubank’s body trembled once. He grabbed Old Hanson by the collar and hauled him toward the boat.

“No time to take more goods! He’s got help! Take the money alive, or risk your life for a few more goods. Choose for yourself!”

The armed thugs on the boat exchanged looks, hesitated, then began picking up the oars.

And at the edge of the camp, a deep, full voice suddenly shouted loud enough to carry.

“Damned traffickers! Filthy man-eaters! In Vserad’s name, crush them!”

The sound of hooves shattered the night sky.

The armed thugs, already scared witless by Lannor, immediately grew quick in their hesitation.

Every one of them used every scrap of strength he had, bracing oars against the harbor, rowing desperately through the seawater, wishing he had two more hands.

Greedy Old Hanson had nothing more to say either. He only lowered his head in the boat and muttered, “My money, my money…”

On the shore, the cavalry charged straight into the camp. Tents could not stop hooves.

The armed thugs, long since stripped of command, were as light as cream on a cake beneath the cavalry charge.

The little boat rowed some distance out across the dark sea, and the people aboard looked back at the shore in lingering fear.

Had they been even two minutes later, they would likely have either had their heads cut off by that ghost-like Witcher, or been trampled into meat paste by the cavalry.

Everyone was still shaken.

But just then, a brown-haired child beside Old Hanson suddenly drew a thin little stabbing sword from his waistband. Amid the rocking waves, he stabbed Old Hanson hard in the arm, then rushed straight for the side of the boat, ready to leap into the sea.

The old man cried out in shock, but the reflexes of a veteran fighter were still there.

His bleeding hand grabbed the brown-haired child in one motion.

“Where did this little bastard get a sword? Who searched him… ah!”

The child grew desperate. In his anxiety, his eyes rolled white for an instant, and then one of the two hounds curled at Ubank’s feet.

As if it had suddenly gone out of control, it lunged at Old Hanson and bit him savagely.

In pain, Old Hanson loosened his grip, and the child leapt into the sea with a splash.

“My goods! Your dog! This… ah, damn it! My money!”

Old Hanson howled on the boat, impossible to tell whether he mourned his coin or his hand.

Ubank only then snapped back to himself. In disbelief, he crouched and looked left and right at the hound that had lost control.

Facing its master, the hound’s eyes were clear. Aside from the blood at the corner of its mouth, it looked as though it had no idea what it had just done.

“Fuck me… seen ghosts twice today?”

Ubank trusted his hounds absolutely.

His family had originally served as dog handlers for the Clan of Undvik in the Skellige Isles.

He had left the isles and come to the Continent because he had no wish to spend his life as a kennelman.

But there was no questioning the craft he had inherited.

The hounds trained by his family were prized enough in the Skellige Isles to be given as rewards at contests.

The two hounds at his feet were the result of two years of his own training. If he gave the order, those two beasts would dare throw themselves at a Griffin.

But today, their food and drink were fine. Their bodies and moods showed nothing wrong… yet they had somehow lost control.

Watching the child struggling through the seawater, Ubank narrowed his eyes.

“…Leave him. We can’t afford the delay. Keep rowing.”

A nautical mile away, a merchant ship showing lights sat on the black sea.

Head Devourer’s boat drew close to the merchant ship. Under the threat of blades and the abuse of the thugs, the twenty-odd children, treated as goods, went aboard crying.

Only after that did Ubank and the thugs he had brought climb up.

The group moved nimbly up the rope ladder and onto the large ship, only to see that many men already stood on the deck.

They wore armor and carried swords. The armor was of good quality, but bore no insignia that could prove their identity.

A bald man wearing a face scarf that covered the lower half of his face, dressed in light, close-fitting leather armor, came out from behind the crowd.

“Well, well.”

The man spoke with obvious mockery as he walked toward Ubank. At that moment, the short, stocky man was helping his two hounds aboard.

“Isn’t this our famous Head Devourer?”

“You said this time you could get a large batch of goods, at least eighty children. His lordship was delighted. But now there are only twenty here… have you thought about how you’ll explain that?”

The bald masked man’s tone was hard to read. One could not tell whether he was mocking him or warning him.

Ubank showed little reaction, but the men he had brought began to stir.

Head Devourer knew the buyer’s “lord,” and judging by that tone, it was the kind of relationship where a botched job required an explanation.

Was that not a superior and subordinate?

Their leader being someone else’s subordinate was not surprising, nor was it something worth resenting.

What put these seasoned villains on guard was this, Ubank had never told any of them about it.

Not a single one.

For this deal, Head Devourer had always told his men it was a simple matter of coin in one hand, goods in the other.

But now, they were speaking openly and without restraint, with no intention of hiding anything.

At this moment, that behavior made the men feel a chill.

“Lord Saffra, I had bad luck. Nothing I could do. If His Lordship insists on an explanation, then all I can say is that I’ll work twice as hard next time.”

Ubank finally hauled the hounds aboard, then spread his hands helplessly.

“A pity, though. Man-eaters made such useful cover. After this, we can forget using them again. But that’s for later. For now, let’s clean up the loose ends.”

The bald masked man nodded. “Right. Loose ends first.”

While they spoke, the thugs Ubank had brought had already gathered warily into a circle.

Some, fiercer than the rest, had knives in hand and were edging toward Ubank, clearly thinking of taking a hostage.

Old Hanson was no longer mourning his money either. His eyes swept nervously around. “Gentlemen! My lords, we small fry heard nothing you two said. We don’t want our share either. Let us get off this ship and leave, how about that?”

Ubank said nothing. He only smiled with narrowed eyes.

Waves slapped against the hull, and the air slowly grew murderous.

Under those encircling stares, the villains were already preparing to fight like cornered fish.

“Waste of time.” The bald masked man, Saffra, gave a contemptuous laugh and raised his hand toward the circle of villains.

Then magical light began to flicker in the reflections of their eyes.

“Sorcerer! He’s a sorcerer! Scatter… boom!”

There was no time to scatter. A translucent magical shockwave swept straight through the villains’ bodies.

Physical impact mixed with magical damage, and the unarmored men all dropped where they stood.

That was the damage a sorcerer in good condition and well prepared could inflict on ordinary men.

With the right positioning, he could wipe out a group in one cast.

“Settle the children. Throw the bodies into the sea. Ubank, think carefully about how you’re going to explain this.”

After saying that, Saffra returned to the cabin without lingering.

Head Devourer nodded indifferently, then walked a few steps to the stern.

From there, he could still see the camp burning on the shore, and the figure standing at the harbor.

Ubank smiled and waved at that figure.

The ship sailed away into the distance.

The chaos in the camp was gradually calming down, not because the routed armed thugs had suddenly become civilized and reasonable.

It was because nearly everyone in the camp who dared bare his teeth was already lying on the ground.

Either lying there in pieces, or lying there as a mess of pulp.

Lannor stood on the harbor. Behind him, Phillip’s cavalry were cutting off heads as proof of battle merit.

Those pitch-black eyes watched the departing merchant ship.

Head Devourer had waved at him from the ship, a nautical mile away.

That should be the buyer’s ship.

“Whip and Spur. The ship’s mark is two stallions pulling a chariot… I’ll remember it, filth.”

The Witcher murmured under his breath.

At a distance of one nautical mile, an ordinary person could not hope to make out any detail on a merchant ship at sea. Remembering the number of masts and sails would already be impressive.

But the Cat potion had not yet worn off in Lannor’s body. In his light-sensitive vision, the mark on the ship was perfectly clear.

“Lannor!” A familiar shout came from behind.

Phillip walked over with a torch in hand and clapped the Witcher on the shoulder with practiced familiarity.

“I truly didn’t expect it, I really didn’t! I knew you Witchers had skills, but how could anyone actually cut through a whole camp alone… fuck!”

As he was voicing his disbelief and the joy of completing the task, Lannor silently turned around.

In the torchlight, the Witcher’s face after drinking the potions looked even stranger and more savage.

It gave the sergeant a proper fright.

Fortunately, after a brief moment, he stopped caring.

Phillip had always respected capable men, and Lannor’s ability, in his view, was no longer merely “great.”

It was damned great.

Even if he had not come, this whole organized, large-scale armed criminal gang would probably have been reduced to scattered fugitives.

The Witcher had truly broken them.

The entire gang’s organization had collapsed.

“Sorry about this. We’d been following you for some time. We saw the bodies of those three soldier-scum… truth be told, we thought you’d lost control back then and didn’t dare come close.”

“It was only after following a while longer, and judging from the information at those outer camps, that we realized you’d found the man-eaters’ nest. So we hurried after you.”

As he spoke, Phillip’s expression was bright with delight.

“Ha! Who would’ve thought it, the man-eaters and the traffickers were one gang! The lads have earned no small merit this time, and that’s thanks to you. Wait a while longer, once the lord’s reward comes down, I’ll make sure you get a large share.”

“Right, we guessed you must have come killing like a madman because someone had got into trouble. The camp’s a mess now. Tell the lads what that person looks like, and we can all lend a hand.”

In truth, there was no need for Phillip’s cavalry to lend a hand. White came running over by himself.

This was the slavers’ main camp. Every cavalryman knew that.

Here, adults might be threats, but children were only goods.

So when White anxiously searched the camp for Lannor, the soldiers busy cutting off heads did nothing to him.

They were seasoned veterans. Treacherous, sly, vicious, heavy-handed, but at least they were official force, with official identities.

Trafficking people, killing children, that sort of gods-cursed work, they did not do.

So even though White looked at the corpses strewn across the ground, even though his steps trembled and he nearly vomited, he still made it to the harbor through the night.

Phillip’s torch marked the two men’s position, and the little boy ran over quickly.

“Hey! Lannor!”

He shouted in excitement. Before this, the boy had only wanted Lannor to hurry and escape.

Because he had not dared imagine that anyone could defeat an entire camp’s enemies alone.

But now, he had seen it with his own eyes.

A child’s excitement was pure. The fear of imprisonment, and the fear of walking past corpses, had now scattered like smoke.

And Lannor was grateful that White was a boy, and would not rush up to hug him like a girl might. At most, he would stand in front of him and bounce excitedly in place.

Because…

Hiss.

A drop of blood ran from his nose and struck the sand, giving off a faint corrosive sound.

Right now, even one drop of his blood was a deadly poison to an ordinary grown man.

White rushed up in front of Lannor, hopping as he spilled out his astonishment.

“You did it, Lannor! You really beat a whole camp full of bad men! I bet there were a hundred people in this camp! No, two hundred!”

Lannor smiled at that. His legs began to weaken. After the fierce battle, the temporary physical enhancement provided by Thunderbolt was starting to fall behind the damage the toxins were doing to his flesh.

His heavily armored body slumped down onto the beach all at once.

Phillip and White were both badly startled.

The boy’s endless amazed chatter stopped. He and Phillip hurried forward, wanting to help Lannor up.

But the Witcher raised a hand and stopped them.

He truly could not touch ordinary people right now.

He wiped a hand beneath his nose, and the studded leather glove, already soaked in blood, gained a black streak at once.

Under the corrosion of toxins, every bone hurt, every muscle felt as if it were tearing…