I'm not a Witcher anymore.

Zig pulled his muddy boots out of the muddy ground and turned to walk towards the farmhouse.

In the woods behind, the mangled corpse of the Fentonian monster still crackled and popped from the burning oil, sending plumes of acrid black smoke soaring into the night sky.

He reached out and pushed against the rough wooden door.

Just as my fingertips were about to touch the door panel—

Squeak.

The wooden door seemed to be pushed open from the inside, creating an extremely jarring sense of separation.

The crackling sounds of burning grease in the woods behind them, the whistling of the night wind through the treetops, and even the lingering stench of decay in the air were all instantly severed by an invisible barrier.

It was as if someone had taken a pair of sharp scissors and cut the room out of Velen's reality.

The room was deathly silent.

Not only were there no sounds of living things, but even the movement of the air itself seemed to have stopped.

Sakia, Zoltan, Dandelion, Anna, Tamara, Evan... everyone has disappeared.

What's even stranger is that the house looks like it's been abandoned for a long time, with no trace of anyone having lived there or stayed there.

A man was sitting beside a dilapidated wooden table.

He wore a plain, earthy orange merchant's robe with faded blue stripes on the cuffs. He was bald, and his face was so ordinary that you would forget him after just one glance in the market of Novigrad.

At this moment, the man was playing with a worn-out wooden spoon in his hand, his fingertips gently stroking the rough wood grain.

"Good evening, stranger." The man looked up, a perfectly measured warm smile on his lips. "My name is Gant Odim."

He pointed outside the door: "I must say, the way you dealt with that Fenton just now was incredibly clean and efficient. Even among the Witchers who underwent the Trial of the Grass in Kaer Morhen, few could do it as... pleasing to the eye as you."

Zieg did not respond.

Gant Odim continued, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings: "You disrupted the transactions between the ancient beings of this land and their servants. Now, they have their eyes on you."

The man tapped the table lightly with the handle of his spoon, producing a dull thud.

"But you're lucky. You've never made offerings to them, never stepped into the Hunchback Swamp, and they haven't been able to leave those ugly servant marks on you. This prevents them from locating you anytime, anywhere, like crushing an ant. But..."

Gant Odim's lips slowly curved into a malicious smile.

"As long as you remain in this muddy wasteland of Velen, they will relentlessly hunt you down. It will be a fight to the death."

"That's easy." Zieg's tone was surprisingly calm. "I'm planning to leave Velen, and I won't be back anytime soon."

Upon hearing this answer, Gant Odim raised an approving eyebrow: "A very practical thought. However, having something like that staring intently at your back... even if you escape to Novigrad, or the freezing cold of Kovirpovis, can you really sleep soundly when you close your eyes at night?"

Zieg's tone was flat, as if stating a perfectly ordinary fact: "I've always been a heavy sleeper. Even if there were corpses under my bed, as long as the bones didn't poke my back, I could still sleep until dawn."

"The mud of Velen will stick to your shoes, stranger. When the threads of fate wrap around your neck, those things have absolute patience. They will lie in wait in the darkness, waiting for you to fall asleep, waiting for you to tire, waiting for you to lower your guard..."

Zig looked at the wooden spoon in his hand: "If you're planning to sit here and continue this nonsense with me in the middle of the night, then I really will have to stay up all night. I suggest you get to the point. Seriously, an old guy like you is much more likely to die suddenly from staying up all night than us young people."

Gant Odim paused for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"If Wigford had half your sense of humor, I might have given him a second chance to be traded back then."

He shook his head, his tone becoming seductive. "Alright, as you wish. Do one thing for me, and I can give you something. Once you wear it, nothing in this world—including those old, ugly women hiding in the swamp—will ever find you again."

"That's it?" Sieg frowned. "I thought you were going to grind those three old witches to dust. With your abilities, wiping them out would be as easy as flipping your hand, wouldn't it?"

Gant Odim raised his hand and gracefully brushed off non-existent dust from his sleeve.

"You're absolutely right." He looked at Zieg as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "But why should I do that?"

"Then I have no choice but to refuse," Zieg replied without the slightest hesitation.

The man stopped fiddling with the wooden spoon in his hand: "Don't rush to refuse. You haven't even heard what I want you to do yet. Trust me, it's actually very simple for someone special like you."

"Wasn't it just Olgierd Ifrec who tricked you?"

Zieg looked calmly into those seemingly ordinary yet unfathomable eyes and said, word by word, "That's a mess between the two of you. I'm not being modest, but you'd better find someone else."

The moment the words fell.

The ever-calm, ever-arrogant smile on Gant Odim's face, which seemed to hold all living beings in its grasp, suddenly froze eerily.

That's an expression that absolutely shouldn't be on his face.

But in just a tenth of a second, or even less, he regained his flawless smile.

"I have to admit..." Gant Odim put down his wooden spoon, stood up, and spoke with a rare seriousness in his voice, "Even though I have adjusted my assessment of you time and time again, you always manage to exceed my expectations."

He gave Zieg a deep look: "I never give someone a second chance. But you're an exception. I'll come back when you need me again."

He raised his hands and began to clap gently.

Accompanied by rhythmic, hollow applause, the man pursed his lips and whistled a light but chilling tune.

He whistled as he backed away into the darkness of the room. He vanished without a trace, like a drop of ink merging into the ocean.

Zieg blinked unconsciously.

He found his hand hovering in mid-air, his fingertips just half an inch away from the wooden door.

The long, drawn-out struggle that had just taken so long, enough to weigh one's very soul, didn't even last a second in the real world.

He didn't even go inside.

He stood outside the farmhouse door.