"Hughes?!"
Vesemir and Allen both cried out in disbelief at the same time.
"That is his name, right?" The plump priestess, confused by the shock in the witchers' voices, began to doubt herself. "What's wrong, Sir Allen, Master Vesemir? Isn't he from the Wolf School?"
"Yes, yes—thank you," Vesemir snapped out of it and gave a quick nod.
"It's alright," the plump priestess said, understanding. "His injuries are very serious, but Priestess Nenneke has already sent someone to fetch Archpriestess Ianna, so you don't need to worry too much. He'll be fine."
"Thank you, truly..."
As Vesemir and Allen expressed their gratitude, the priestess walked away.
They headed straight to the operating room.
"Vesemir," Allen said grimly, "if I remember correctly, Hughes, Bond, and Fred were all apprenticed under the same travel mentor, right?"
"Yes," Vesemir replied with a deep frown. "After the duel tournament between the Wolf and Cat Schools, Kaer Morhen didn't have any regular witchers left. The only one still available and not away on assignments was Master Danthe."
"Hughes, Bond, and Fred were all doing their trial journey under Master Danthe."
So here's the problem—
Hughes came back severely wounded, carried by Lysa. But what about Bond and Fred? What about Master Danthe?
"This shouldn't be happening," Vesemir muttered, clearly disturbed. "No matter if it's a regular witcher or a witcher master—when they take apprentices on trial journeys, they almost never accept dangerous contracts..."
"And absolutely never take on contracts involving large monsters."
"In the first year especially, they stick to major roads and take simple jobs—cleaning out city sewers, exterminating drowners in villages, that kind of thing."
"Danthe's guided quite a few young witchers who had just passed the mountain trial. He's a very experienced master. He knows the unspoken rules of trial journeys."
"So how did this happen?"
Vesemir just couldn't understand how Danthe, with three freshly initiated witchers, could've gotten into such a disaster.
Hughes, Bond, and Fred were all just regular witchers!
What—did they also run into a royal griffin, the Wild Hunt, and an evil god while passing through?
Allen was also deep in thought.
He knew Master Danthe.
Before his own mountain trial, Allen's strength was already far beyond Hughes, Bond, and Fred. Vesemir had given him a few days of free movement before the trial.
When Allen wanted to venture out from Kaer Morhen to hunt monsters and improve his combat skills, Vesemir, unable to accompany him, had asked Danthe to go with him.
Allen remembered Danthe's cautiousness vividly.
Not only did he find signs of minor monsters like foglets and nekkers and refuse to let Allen go near them, he wouldn't even let him stray too far from the fortress.
Those five days—Allen remembered clearly—he killed only twelve drowners in total.
An average of just two a day.
Let's put it this way...
If Danthe had been Allen's travel mentor instead of Vesemir, there's no way he would have allowed Allen to hunt and capture a royal griffin. And absolutely no chance he would have let him charge at a wraith on horseback during the May Festival.
He might not have even listened to Allen when Erni, Klar, and the others were turned into jade statues by the Transformation Seal Spell and abducted. He likely wouldn't have agreed to lie in ambush for Vilgefortz.
That's why—
Allen shared the same doubt as Vesemir.
If it had been any other witcher master—say, the hot-tempered Aristo, deputy commander of the Witcher Corps—then sure, maybe they'd have gotten into trouble helping someone on the road and ended up provoking a powerful boss-level monster.
But Danthe?
A master from the Wolf School who was even more conservative than Vesemir, one who lived by the principle that "the battle is won before it begins"?
How could he have ended up in a situation so disastrous that his fate is now unknown?
"Ssshh..."
A sharp metallic scent—thick with the tang of iron—wafted in on the mountain breeze, mingling with formalin, ether, and alcohol.
Allen wrinkled his nose and slowed his steps.
They had reached the operating room of the Melitele Temple.
Priest Nenneke and the other clergy had just arrived as well.
From behind the white-cloth-covered wooden door, orders and urgent calls came through as the surgery began.
"Oh gods… he's just a child…" Allen heard a woman exclaim—probably after removing the bandages from Hughes' face.
"A witcher from the Wolf School… they say he passed the trial with Sir Allen… Hand me the scissors—Cirilla…"
"…Scissors, Lady Cirilla…"
"…Ah… the wound's turned pale from being soaked… passed the trial with Sir Allen… no wonder… witcher trials really are… they're still just chil—"
"Silence! No idle chatter!"
Priest Nenneke snapped.
After that, only the snip snip of scissors cutting through fabric and the scraping of sharp tools on skin could be heard.
Allen and Vesemir exchanged a grave look.
"If they're talking like that," Vesemir murmured, "at least it means his life isn't in danger…"
Allen nodded, drew a deep breath, and stepped quietly up to the operating room door, lifting the white curtain.
Knock knock.
A gentle knock echoed against the wooden door.
"This is Allen and Vesemir from the Wolf School," Allen said quietly. "May we come in?"
There was a few seconds of silence inside the operating room.
"Come in," Nenneke said.
Allen glanced at Vesemir, then pushed the door open.
In an instant, the heavy stench of formalin, ether, and alcohol overwhelmed even the strong scent of blood, rushing out to meet them.
His hand briefly paused on the doorknob, but Allen pushed forward and stepped inside.
The moment they entered—
Nenneke gave a slight nod, and Lysa walked over with a worried expression.
On the cold hospital bed lay Hughes, whom they hadn't seen in months. His face was as pale as a corpse.
A vicious gash split across his brow, the skin torn open so deep that white bone was visible beneath.
And that wasn't even the worst of it. His body was covered in claw marks, beast bites, and dark, corrosive wounds that looked like they came from acid...
Of all the injuries, the one on his forehead—exposing the skull—was actually the least severe.
"Crack... crack..."
Allen's hands clenched unconsciously, his knuckles grinding.
"Allen..." Lysa stepped forward, reaching out with both hands. "Hughes is going to be okay. It looks scary, but there's no danger to his life."
Feeling the warmth of her hands gently wrapping his, Allen looked down at her, took a deep breath, and softly asked:
"Lysa... where did you find... Hughes?"
Vesemir also turned away from Hughes' brutal injuries to fix his gaze on Lysa.
His molten gold eyes flickered with unease.
Seeing that Allen didn't immediately pull away from her, Lysa felt an odd sense of relief. She straightened up and replied seriously, "In La-Valette, between Vizima and Aelland, near a small village by the Pontar River."
"Archpriestess Ianna sent me to Vizima for... certain duties. On the return trip, I passed through La-Valette and stayed there for the night."
"This morning, just as I was about to leave, a fisherman from the village suddenly started yelling that he'd caught a man on his line. When they dragged him ashore, it turned out to be Hughes."
"As for the others..."
Lysa's brows furrowed slightly, and she shook her head. "The villagers only brought in Hughes. I saw he was seriously wounded, so I performed emergency bandaging and used divine magic to stop the bleeding before rushing back here."
"There should've been others, right?"
"Yes," Allen said grimly, exchanging a heavy glance with Vesemir. "There should be three more—three witchers from the Wolf School."
Lysa bit her lip at that. "I'm sorry. Hughes was in such bad shape—I left in a hurry. I didn't go back to the river…"
"This isn't your fault," Allen interrupted, shaking his head and cutting off her guilt. "Hughes is alive because of you."
He had seen it for himself.
With the kind of injuries Hughes had sustained, if Lysa hadn't found him and delayed her departure from La-Valette, he would've surely died.
Lysa let out a quiet breath of relief, the corners of her lips lifting slightly—only to be quickly pressed flat again.
"Lysa, do you know Hughes?" Vesemir suddenly asked, puzzled.
"A few months ago, I was sent…" Lysa glanced around at the older and younger priests nearby, who were all holding their breath and straining their ears. She paused awkwardly, then corrected herself, "Lady Vera brought me to the temple, and I'd seen him a few times before that. That's how I know him."
So Hughes didn't reveal his identity himself... Vesemir immediately felt things become more complicated.
He had assumed Hughes had identified himself after being rescued and regaining consciousness. That could've led to clues about the others' whereabouts.
But now...
"Snip, snip…"
The temple priestesses—or rather, temple physicians—were cutting away the pale, festering flesh and the skin damaged by acid with sharp scalpels, then sewing the wounds back together with needle and thread.
The steel needles pierced through his skin with a sound like leather being punched through.
Hughes' eyebrows twitched in discomfort, his lips quivering. He was clearly in pain… but didn't wake up.
"...Irregular gash on the forehead… elliptical bruising on the upper right arm…" Vesemir stepped closer, his dark golden cat-like eyes scanning Hughes' wounds. He sniffed lightly. "He fell into the river… was slammed by strong currents into jagged rocks…"
"There's the scent of drowners… To avoid them, he must have crashed into sharp stones on the riverbed… That's likely when he was knocked unconscious…"
"…Judging by how the bruising is beginning to fade… it likely happened just before dawn this morning…"
Vesemir sidestepped to avoid a physician who had subconsciously backed away from him.
He glanced at Allen, who had followed him in, then swept his eyes over the priests—none of whom objected to his actions. His gaze returned to Hughes' injuries, analyzing further: "…Bite marks from a canine on the arm… tearing upward from below… Judging by the depth and size… most likely an ordinary wolf…"
"…Corrosion on the back… hard to analyze due to water dilution…"
"…Penetrating wound on the shoulder… but it's off-target… The strike aimed for the heart—Quen shield must've broken and deflected it…"
"…Whoever delivered that strike is likely the one who delayed Danthe… no… it's more likely Danthe held it back…"
"…Scrape wounds wrapped around the leg…"
....
Allen listened intently to Vesemir's analysis.
In the profession of Witchers, he had already reached the pinnacle in many aspects.
Swordsmanship and Signs—he lacked neither. His swordsmanship might still need refinement, but in terms of Signs, especially for someone from the School of the Wolf, which didn't specialize in them, his mastery was already at the level of a Witcher master.
Only in the field of monster lore—especially identifying an attacker from wound patterns, a domain that required immense hands-on experience and couldn't be codified or leveled up through the Witcher's bestiary—he was still far behind veterans like Vesemir.
After Vesemir finished his analysis, Allen cast a glance at the priests and physicians in the operating room, then asked in a voice only another Witcher could hear: "Vesemir, what do you think they encountered? Could it have been a Sorcerer?"
Vesemir's analysis hadn't revealed any wounds consistent with common spells, but it was far too strange for a cautious Witcher master and his party to be so gravely wounded.
Suspecting a Sorcerer wasn't far-fetched.
"I'm not certain," Vesemir withdrew his gaze, replying hesitantly. "The wounds don't look like they were caused by a Sorcerer, but… that's not definite."
After all, wounds could be faked.
Hughes wasn't particularly strong. For a Sorcerer bold enough to ambush a Witcher from the School of the Wolf, it wouldn't be hard to manufacture misleading injuries on Hughes.
For all they knew, Hughes was deliberately released by the Sorcerer—no one could've predicted he'd run into Lysa.
"But the wolves and the wound that pierced through the Quen shield…" Vesemir's tone shifted, "they're more reminiscent of a Leshen—one that can use innate magic to manipulate animals and plants within its territory. It could've summoned wolves to attack Hughes, then used sharp roots unearthed from below to impale his leg. But…"
Vesemir paused.
"But what?" Allen asked.
"But this corroded patch is strange," Vesemir pointed to a grotesque blackened wound where the flesh had been carved away. "For corrosion this deep… no animal, plant, or even monster that a Leshen controls should be capable of inflicting that."
"Could Hughes have run into another monster while escaping?" Allen didn't press the Sorcerer theory. After all, Sorcerers had a wide range of techniques—focusing too much on one possibility would be pointless.
And thinking about it again, though Sorcerers were still highly suspicious, for such arrogant mages who looked down on Witchers to go to such lengths to cover their tracks… that didn't quite fit their usual behavior.
But on the other hand—
For an experienced Witcher like Danthe to lead three fresh apprentices straight into a Leshen's territory? That was even stranger.
In the Witcher world, creatures akin to demigods like the Leshen usually dwelled in remote, uninhabited wilderness.
How could Master Danthe possibly bring Hughes and the others so deep into such territory?
"Possibly." Vesemir nodded, not denying the idea. "What exactly attacked them… we'll have to wait for Hughes to tell us. But…"
His brow furrowed deeply, and he leaned closer to Allen's ear, lowering his voice: "Hughes' surgery is likely to take quite a while. Should we fly to La Valette first, try to track down Bond, Fred, and Danthe?"
Fly to La Valette…
Allen's eyes lingered on Hughes' battered, ruined body. He thought in silence for a moment, then shook his head.
"Let's wait for Archpriestess Ianna. She might have a way to wake Hughes sooner…"
Tap tap tap—
Rushed footsteps echoed from down the corridor.
The two Witcher masters broke off their discussion and turned toward the door simultaneously.
Ianna had arrived.
.....
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