Astartes of the Bear School

Chapter 2067 2039. The Wizard

Standing on the suspended corridor overlooking the entire hall, Leilana calmly recounted to Lann the fate and identities of the contents of these 'pots'.

They are shamans, a minority group that originally lived in the Shadowlands.

However, it was only later, when the sorcerers left the Shadowlands and came to the Borderlands, that they were called the Rare People.

Rare people are a general term that evokes a sense of awe towards 'mysterious outsiders'.

And this is also... the ethnicity from which Queen Marika comes from.

The sorcerers seemed to be kind by nature and beautiful in appearance. Most of them resembled Queen Marika: tall, with striking blonde hair and pretty faces.

This should be an advantage of a minority group, but in the Shadowlands... the dominant ethnic group here was originally the Horned People.

Since Lann and his group arrived in the Shadowlands, they traveled all the way from the Graveyard Plains to Ensis City to meet Leilana.

It seemed that everything they saw and heard along the way was about how miserable the Horned People were under Mesmer's conquest.

People can't die even if they want to; they are left only as shadows, wandering in this world in agony. They are impaled and hung on gun barrels, screaming until their bodies wither away, yet they are still left hanging.

But in fact, the Horned People use similar methods to treat other ethnic groups.

This is not to say that they were inherently cruel, but rather that due to the cultural atmosphere, they viewed torture and torment as a sacred act.

People worship the horn, an organ of spiritual convergence.

Their entire group's technological development was based on the gathering of spiritual energy through horns, resulting in the development of 'spirit summoning'. Their highest achievement was the ability to allow the souls of gods to ascend to the Spiral Tower, the Gate of Gods, which was of divine rank.

However, whether a person has enough horns or whether they are strong enough depends not only on their innate talent, but also on ways to improve them through training.

After all, for a technology system to continuously expand and upgrade, it must first include enough people to enter the system for application and research.

It would have been difficult for their spirit summoning techniques to have developed to their current state if they had only relied on those few but exceptionally talented horned people covered in horns.

The cultivation method advocated by the people of Jiao is asceticism.

He tortures himself in a way that can be described as self-harm and self-abuse in order to enhance his spirituality and mind, thereby enabling him to grow more horns, master more spirituality, and perform stronger spirit possession.

Countless horned people went mad or died during this process, but it had no impact whatsoever. After all, asceticism really works.

This is why the entire Horned People's tribe, due to their mastery of asceticism, has become exceptionally creative in their various forms of punishment.

Horrifying tortures are commonplace among the Horned People.

Furthermore, when the horned people inflict torture on others, they often do so with a sense of compassion and redemption—they hope that the tortured person can become better through suffering, viewing the punishment as a form of penance, and making the tortured person more spiritual.

In a community that as a whole reveres asceticism, you certainly can't expect these people to have any friendly attitude towards other ethnic groups.

Or, in the eyes of the horned people: I've already helped you with your spiritual practice and spiritual advancement, isn't that kindness?

They completely disregard the fact that other ethnic groups neither know nor want to participate in the spirit possession techniques of the local people.

The sorcerers, like the horned people, lived in the Shadowlands, but were few in number and weak in power, and were naturally forcibly incorporated into the horned people's system.

Furthermore, because the shamanic people have advantages over other peoples, they have received special attention from the people.

What follows is the contents of these pots.

The shamans are such an outstanding race that everyone values ​​them highly and wants to make the most of them.

They used whips, which contained rotten teeth and decayed cavities from the weaving process, to lash the sorcerer. The filth on the teeth and the rough, uneven wounds would cause severe infections, leading to the sorcerer's body becoming festering and ulcerated.

Next, they chopped up the sinners among the horned people and sealed them in a jar along with the infected sorcerers whose bodies were festering.

The chunks of flesh and the festering wounds fused together through infection and decay, eventually transforming into these long-legged lumps of flesh.

This process is intended to allow sinners among the Horned People to be reborn through the superior physical and spiritual abilities of the shaman, and to become better people.

However, there is no doubt that the shaman who never received or learned the knowledge of horned spirit possession only suffered in the process.

"Uhhhhh!"

On the beds lined up in the hall, the witches were slowly rolling over. It wasn't that they weren't in pain, but by now even their wails were too weak to be heard, let alone roll over.

In fact, rolling around in bed does not relieve their physical pain at all; it is just torture.

The Shadow City arranged for some perfumers to look after the contents of these... jars in this room.

As Lan En passed the tables where the perfumers were sitting in the hall, he glanced at them briefly. They seemed to be still figuring out how to peel the rotten flesh off the sorcerers and how to save them.

However, these perfumers were all medics who accompanied the expeditionary force before the Shadowlands were sealed away, and they haven't even caught up with the current level of healing skills of the perfumers in Rodel. Instead, they've focused their efforts on combat to protect themselves in the Shadowlands, which has further hindered their research progress.

Leilana and Lan En walked down the hall together and skillfully walked to a hospital bed.

A hand clad in exquisite silver armor gently grasped a hand that barely peeked out from within a ball of flesh.

The slimy, viscous fluid from the rotting flesh made a sticky, disgusting squeezing sound as it pressed against the gauntlet.

The contents of the jar seemed to have grasped at a straw, weakly hissing as it clenched Leilana's hand.

Leilana didn't react excessively; on the contrary, she continued to pat the fleshy balls with a gentle rhythm.

The festering, disgusting flesh, the seemingly endless screams, the foul odor, the filthy hospital bed, the tall woman who fought fiercely yet showed tenderness and patience at this moment…

Lan En almost thought he had returned to Yharnam in that nightmare, back to the medical center where the Healing Church gathered patients as research subjects.

The woman before him was not the Twin Moon Knight, Laylana, but Maria, a vampire from Cainhurst.

“The pot at the border…” Lan En stood across the hospital bed from Leilana and said in a low voice, “It’s not like this inside.”

“That is precisely what makes Queen Marika so great,” Leilana replied softly without looking up. “Even in her homeland, where pots were such terrifying and malicious things, she was still able to accept the technology and, after taking it out, to make it better.”

When Queen Marika saw the pot at the border... wouldn't she have nightmares?

Lan En suddenly thought of this and inexplicably looked at Melina behind him.

The soul girl's face remained outwardly calm, but her jaw muscles were bulging slightly as she exerted force, and her hands under the cloak were trembling slightly.

Did she remember something?
Lan En guessed to himself, while gently nudging the equally stunned plush ball beside him with his knee, signaling it to pull Melina away first.

Leilana's hand was quickly released.

Because these 'pot contents' actually have little muscle strength left; their flesh has grown together with foreign scraps of flesh, twisting and contorting together.

"Is that all?" The Witcher asked calmly once more after Leilana sat up by the bedside. "All the sorcerers of Shadowlands?"

"Not all of them, but almost all of them. Perhaps some will remain in the ruins where the Horned People made the large pots. But whether they stayed where they were or were brought here makes no difference."

Leilana reached for a dirty rag on the table and wiped her fingernails, her voice calm and even.

“Messermo brought the sorcerers to Shadow City in an attempt to save them. But as you can see, it was all for naught.”

"The only good thing about this place is that when they can't hold on any longer, we can cover their eyes with a blessed eye mask so that they can vaguely see the blessed golden light, which is a small comfort."

"Now, Lann, tell me," the Twin Moon Knight's helmet pointed directly at the Witcher, "after learning about the Horned People's culture, do you still believe they are just innocent, good people?"

The contents of the pot on the hospital bed wailed and struggled, several of them falling off the bed and landing on the floor with a sticky "splat" of rotting flesh.
Then the perfumers carried her back to bed.

Lan En watched this scene without saying a word. He simply walked back with Leilana.

Upon reaching the second-floor skybridge, Velvet Ball was standing at the entrance with Melina.

The calico kitten looked at the other with concern, while the soul girl leaned against the wall as if she had no strength left in her body.

But when the two men came up, she suddenly straightened up and stood properly, as if nothing had happened.

Lann walked up to her on the wooden floor, looking down at her, while Melina stared back at the Witcher with her right eye.

He emphasized that nothing had happened to him.

Lan En felt his skirt armor being tugged, so he looked down even lower and found that it was a fluffy ball scratching at the hem of his dragon skin skirt with its little paws.

The kitten didn't say anything, but its little ears drooped like airplane ears, its big, watery eyes looked at the hall below the suspended corridor, then turned to look at Lan En and let out a soft meow.

"Boss, they're meowing..."

Ultimately, small creatures like Palicoes are unlikely to witness the suffering of others.

As for himself... Lan En chuckled self-deprecatingly.

It's hard to say. No wonder he's the boss of the plush ball business.

“Your attempt to peel away the rotten flesh and the sorcerer with non-invasive treatments is obviously not going to work.”

The Witcher's calm and rational voice rang out in the corridor filled with screams and wails.

"The body has already deteriorated to this extent, yet the person is still alive. What's the point of using medicine and incense powder at this point? Do you expect those sorcerers' bodies to directly digest or absorb the remaining rotten flesh? They should just use surgery!"

(End of this chapter)