The Witcher: Serpent School Witcher's Otherworldly Journey

His fingertips traced the newly formed, tiny nick on the blade, and he subconsciously calculated the amount of pure silver powder needed for repair. The bone spurs of the water monsters here were noticeably harder than he had ever experienced; perhaps there were undiscovered rich mineral deposits upstream of the Pontal River.

If that's the case, this intelligence alone is worth several orens. Naturalists in Novigrad love to acquire firsthand observations of the ecology of such monsters.

As the charred water ghost's tongue fell into the canvas bag, he gave a slight smile to the bulging bag. That arrogant squire had better be prepared with the full reward, or Kilyam wouldn't mind dumping this stinking trophy onto his shiny deerskin boots in front of the entire battalion.

It took him about half an hour to use the same trick to clear out the remaining scattered water ghosts. The sun had almost sunk below the horizon, leaving only a last murky orange-red hue on the horizon, like a wound about to heal.

The light on the river surface changed from golden to leaden gray, and things underwater began to blur, requiring even the Witcher's eyes to focus more intently.

Kiliam squinted at the campfire rising from the opposite bank. Thirty water ghosts, ninety orens. Enough for two weeks' worth of supplies, and two weeks was more than enough time for him to cross the Pontal Valley and reach Velen.

He didn't plan to continue hunting at night. Not out of fear, but because the Witcher's Trial of the Grass had already eliminated most of the factors that would affect his combat level.

However, the water ghosts are more active at night than at dusk. Without the scorching heat of the sun, groups of water ghosts even dare to venture far from the water to hunt, returning only at dawn.

The stench of blood and rotting entrails that permeates the battlefield can travel far on the night wind. The scent released by buckthorn bushes is almost identical to that of rotting meat; the combination of the two smells is nothing short of a welcoming invitation to a feast for predators who hunt by smell in the dark.

Ghoul.

Faster, smarter, and more difficult to deal with than water ghosts. An adult ghoul's fighting strength is roughly equivalent to three water ghosts, and they never act alone. If a group of ghouls is attracted by the scent of corpses, the ghoul will be forced to fight a completely unrewarding battle while exhausted.

Risk killing a few more water ghosts and earning a dozen more orens, only to be surrounded by a group of ghouls drawn by the smell of blood?

This is a bad deal no matter how you look at it. When Vesemir was wintering in Kaer Morhen, he said that greedy witchers die faster than foolish witchers, because foolish witchers at least don't walk into traps willingly.

Just as he had thought at the beginning of the battle, the Witcher needed to be cautious, and he didn't need to add unnecessary risks.

Kilyam knelt on one knee, preparing to collect the last few corpses with alchemical value, but his fingers suddenly stopped on the muddy ground.

Among the three hoofprints of the water ghost were traces that shouldn't have been there.

Those are scratches from military spurs.

He brushed aside a layer of wet mud, and the outline of the scratches became clearer. A standard Temerian spur, six-toothed, iron, with anti-slip serrations. The depth and spacing of the scratches indicated that the spur's owner had been dragged, and that the person was alive at the time, because a dead person's feet wouldn't struggle at that angle.

He heard that at least two cavalrymen had gone missing here last night. The witcher used his dagger to lift half of a epaulette embroidered with broom flowers and suddenly understood why the military camp attracted water ghosts.

Kiliam turned the epaulettes over.

The direction of the scratch is wrong.

If the cavalrymen were attacked by the water ghosts while on patrol, the spur marks should point towards the camp. A person's instinct when in danger is to flee to safety, just as an injured deer will run towards its herd.

But these scratches point downstream, towards the wilderness far from the camp.

If we rule out the possibility that they were deserters, this means that those cavalrymen were not fleeing, but being dragged. After being pulled from their horses, they were dragged downstream along the riverbank.

Water ghosts wouldn't do that. Water ghosts are creatures that eat on the spot; once they catch their prey, they tear it apart and swallow it. Their almond-sized brains are not large enough to support the complex behavioral logic of "moving the food elsewhere to eat it."

Only a human could pull a fully armed cavalryman off his horse and drag him for dozens of steps, Kiriam thought.

However, there were obviously no bandits near the military camp. But in addition to the evils that developed for money, there were other evils that were more hidden.

With just a moment's thought, the Witcher quickly matched the corresponding possibilities with his past experiences.

Some nobles apparently viewed gladiatorial combat as a pre-battle pastime, and the corpses of the defeated often "coincidentally" disappeared near monster lairs. Clean and efficient, with no one pursuing the matter—this was nothing new in the North.

The Nilfgaardians called the northerners barbarians, a harsh but not entirely unfounded term. The Empire, at least, kept this barbarity confined within the walls of the arena; spectators bought tickets, gladiators signed waivers, and everything was governed by rules.

The nobles in the north didn't even bother to maintain this semblance of decorum.

Training a cavalryman is expensive, though far less so than training a knight, but the daily happiness of the nobles is more important.

The river breeze carried sounds from the camp on the opposite bank. The sounds of zithers and laughter mingled together, with the faint clinking of wine glasses. These sounds emanated from the brightly lit tents, crossed the river, and drifted away in the night air thick with the stench of charred corpses.

Kiliam stuffed the blood-stained leather back into the saddle lining and silently mounted his horse.

Twenty years earlier, during another war in Temuria, he had witnessed a count feeding his beloved royal pterosaur with live prisoners. As the guards shoved the screaming prisoners into the enclosure, the ladies wrapped in brocade covered their crimson lips with ivory folding fans, their eyes revealing not pity, but excitement.

The entertainment needs of nobles have always been more ferocious and harder to satisfy than the appetite of water ghosts.

A nobleman is always a nobleman, isn't he?

As the first ghoul's howl ripped through the night, the Witcher had already returned to his camp in Temeria. He pulled half a loaf of black bread from the inner pocket of his cloak; it was a cheap, low-quality loaf he'd traded for yesterday from a wandering merchant—wheat bran mixed with sawdust.

Unless his own life is threatened, Giliam has no intention of helping Folstätter's army to clear out the ghouls roaming around the camp for free. After all, the eccentric nobles always have all sorts of unexpected ways to entertain themselves. The nobles who cannot drink and make merry in the army camp where His Majesty the King is always able to find some more suitable activities to relax.

There are always plenty of corpses in the wild.

Giliam wasn't interested in that. In this messed-up era, the greatest kindness a Witcher could show was not searching a corpse lying on the road for any valuable rings or gold teeth.