It was mid-afternoon, and the air was unbearably hot.
At this time of day, the tavern was as lively as ever.
Oddly, most tables were unoccupied, though filled mugs of cool ale stood on them.
The patrons were all gathered around a single old, battered wooden table.
"Old Jett, the hunter from East Village, is dead too. He died last night," whispered one man sitting at the table, surrounded by the crowd.
"Old Jett is dead?!" exclaimed someone in shock. "Wasn't the only silver fork in East Village in his possession for hunting?"
"What use is a silver fork?" The man at the table sipped his ale and sighed. "When the old village chief went with the guards to collect the bodies this morning, I went to take a look..."
"A whole family of five… Blood everywhere—on the floor, walls, even the bed. Pieces of flesh and shattered bones were strewn from the bedroom to…ugh..."
Recalling the horrific scene, the man dry-heaved.
After a moment, he regained his composure, though still pale, and continued: "According to the old village chief and the guards, at least three drowners followed the blood scent from the wild chickens Old Jett hunted yesterday. They snuck into his house late at night."
"Old Jett was just a hunter, not one of those monster... er, witchers..."
"Let alone in the dead of night, when everyone was asleep..."
"When they found them, the silver fork was lying beside Jenny—her stomach had been completely ripped open. There wasn't a drop of those damned monsters' blood on the fork."
As he finished speaking, silence enveloped the tavern.
The patrons' faces turned pale, bloodless like freshly dead corpses.
What had happened to Old Jett could just as easily happen to any one of them.
"Old... Old Jett really was careless. How could he bring home the blood without cleaning it up?" someone croaked, as though trying to justify the tragedy.
"You don't know him? His family of five relied on the game he hunted to make ends meet. Plus, Jenny was pregnant. The blood of those wild chickens is a prized ingredient for making black pudding. How could he bear to waste it?"
"Besides, Old Jett's house, being that far from the river, was the safest in the whole village. Nothing had happened for decades. Who could've expected this… sigh."
Sighs spread through the tavern like a contagion, echoing off its wooden walls.
"Don't the guards, mages, or the council care?!" someone slammed the table angrily.
"Shh!" The others quickly covered his mouth, their eyes darting nervously around.
Noticing that the two mercenaries in leather armor and swords slung at their waists—likely bounty hunters traveling to the frontlines—remained engrossed in their meals at the distant corner, the group relaxed.
One of them hissed, "Are you mad? The last person who slandered the mages was torn to pieces by those damn monsters while still clutching his broken silver fork!"
"Do you want to die as horribly as him?"
The table-slammer grunted, disgruntled but subdued, lowering his voice to complain: "We pay so much in taxes every year to support those nobles and mages, and they do nothing?!"
"They could at least hire some monster... er, witchers. When I went to Ban Ard to deliver goods in March, I saw those witchers killing drowners faster than we could harvest grain."
At the mention of witchers, the group perked up slightly.
But an older man sitting nearby shook his head. "Don't count on it. Witchers won't come."
"Why not?" they asked in unison.
The old man took a sip of ale, sighed, and said, "Do you think the village chief hasn't thought of that?"
"He lives in the village just like us—he can't run away either."
"If hiring witchers were an option, the village chief would've put out the call long ago."
The tavern patrons exchanged uneasy glances.
"Word is..." the old man glanced at the mercenaries in the corner before lowering his voice, "there's been a falling-out between the witchers and the mages. A few months ago, after that downpour of drowned monsters, the mages shortchanged the payment. Those freaks refused to come back."
"What?! Even the rich mages don't pay their debts?"
"The richer they are, the stingier they get. Same with the village chief's family."
"True. Borrow a needle from his house to mend clothes, and you'd have to sew his stuff in return..."
The conversation veered off into complaints about the village chief's miserly ways.
"Bang!"
A fist slammed onto the wooden table, spilling the cloudy ale in the cups.
The same agitated man shot to his feet.
"No way! If the mages won't help and staying means waiting to die, I'm taking my wife and kids to the city!"
"At least there's that big blue dome there every day—it's got to be safe."
The crowd erupted into another heated discussion about moving to the city.
The old man calmly finished the last of his ale and asked one question in a quiet voice: "Do you have money?"
The room fell silent again.
The man who had stood up flushed red. "I have strength. I can find work once I'm in the city."
The old man didn't argue, merely stated coldly: "Since that blue dome went up two months ago, the entry fee has gone up again and again."
"My son, who ran errands for the village chief, came back from the city two days ago and told me that the entry fee for Ban Ard is now five orens."
"Five orens?!" The man wobbled unsteadily, nearly falling.
All his backbreaking work in the mines over half a year had earned him barely twenty orens.
"And even then," the old man sighed, "staying in the village gives us some chance of surviving."
"Ban Ard is the real man-eater."
"I've seen it myself—those like us who settled in the city never come back."
The old man's words cast a heavy gloom over the crowd.
"Then... is there really no way out?" someone asked.
The old man gripped his empty mug and, after a long silence, let out another sigh.
"This is fate…"
----------------
In the far corner of the tavern, the two mercenaries continued eating the unappetizing stew and hard bread. But their focus wasn't on the food.
Drowners with enhanced senses of smell… the explosive increase in monster numbers… the skyrocketing entry fees… the blue dome enveloping Ban Ard Academy…
"Quite the haul of information," thought the younger of the two mercenaries.
From over thirty meters away, amidst the noisy tavern chatter, he had effortlessly captured every word spoken at the other end of the room.
Clearly, this young "mercenary" was no ordinary person.
"Allen, your wild ideas never cease to amaze me!"
The other man, a middle-aged mercenary wearing a black wide-brimmed hat, looked up at the younger man and clicked his tongue in admiration.
Yes.
These two "mercenaries" were none other than Allen and Vesemir.
The most distinguishing—or perhaps the only—physical feature that set witchers apart from ordinary people was their cat-like eyes, resembling those of beasts.
And now, though Vesemir couldn't see his own eyes, the black human-like pupils in Allen's gaze, combined with the sword scabbards they carried prepared back in Kael Village, made it almost believable.
If not for the medallion of their school hidden beneath their leather armor faintly vibrating, even Vesemir himself might have thought, just moments before entering the tavern, that Allen had returned to the life of an ordinary man, posing as a mercenary heading to the frontlines for bounty.
"Just a simple trick," Allen said with a smile, pulling his mind away from the drunken patrons lost in their grim thoughts.
"This is no simple trick…" Vesemir remarked, marveling at his apprentice's eyes again. His hand moved up as if he wanted to touch his own, but then, seemingly reminded of something, he lowered it back onto the table.
The intricacy of this illusion far surpassed the practical one Allen had showcased back at Kaer Morhen.
"Is this… something we can learn?" Vesemir asked hopefully.
Allen shook his head and was about to respond when—
"Thump, thump, thump~"
The sound of approaching footsteps silenced both witchers.
"Guests, here's your jerky and fruit jam flatbread." The tavern keeper came over, carrying a bulging burlap sack.
"Thanks. How much?"
"Well, with the drowners rampaging recently, the prices of provisions have risen quite a bit. Altogether, it's two orens and seven coppers. Since you ordered in bulk, I'll take just two orens." The tavern keeper's hand clutched the sack tightly.
Vesemir produced two silver coins and placed them into his hand.
After inspecting the coins, the tavern keeper grinned broadly and handed over the provisions.
"Good luck in battle! Kill those Aedirnian scum!"
"We will." Vesemir patted the longsword on his belt.
The tavern keeper departed.
"You probably can't learn this," Allen continued the earlier conversation.
Unlike at Kaer Morhen, where there were many eyes and ears around, Allen scanned the surroundings, then pulled out the Mirage pearl, briefly showing it to Vesemir before tucking it away again.
"This is a magical artifact given to me by Lady Vera."
"Well, that's a real shame," Vesemir sighed, enviously glancing at the slight bulge on Allen's chest.
With their information gathered and provisions acquired, the witchers had achieved all their objectives in the tavern. They finished their black bread with the overly salty stew and stood to leave.
"Creak~"
The wooden door groaned as it opened.
Stepping out of the tavern, Allen immediately spotted the towering city in the distance, its blue shield shimmering brilliantly under the blazing sun.
That was Ban Ard, the most enigmatic city in all of Kaedwen.
From Kaer Morhen, their route to Vergen didn't actually require passing through this city.
In fact, the Mirage pearl's disguise, while intricate, was most likely to be compromised in this northern stronghold of sorcerers.
However, to clarify one particular issue, Allen had convinced Vesemir to make Ban Ard their first stop after leaving Kaer Morhen.
Why, in over a month—no, nearly three months since the Equinox Apprentice Combat Tournament—had the Aen Elle, like lost wanderers, gone to Flotsam Port and Ellander but never set foot in this nexus of spheres and convergence of dimensions?
Could the Wild Hunt's target not be Ard Gaeth's Gate?
Impossible.
The celestial convergence three months ago was so spectacular that it left no room for doubt. The Wild Hunt's reappearance after centuries coincided too perfectly to be mere coincidence.
Was it possible that the Aen Elle couldn't pinpoint their target and were just blindly searching?
Allen doubted that as well.
Could a race of conquerors, who had subdued countless worlds, lack the means to track such immense spatial fluctuations?
But now…
Staring at the massive blue shield encompassing nearly all of Ban Ard, and recalling the timing of its rise "two months ago," Allen felt he had found the answer.
The shield, raised after the Apprentice Combat Tournament, was likely the reason the Wild Hunt had been misled.
"Have you figured it out?"
Vesemir's voice broke Allen's train of thought as he led a horse from the stable.
"More or less," Allen replied, mounting his steed with a practiced ease.
Gathering more precise intelligence might cost them five orens just to enter Ban Ard—or even require infiltrating its famed academy.
Recalling the oppressive figures he'd encountered after the Apprentice Combat Tournament, Allen decided he didn't need that level of detail.
As for sneaking into Ban Ard Academy to disrupt the shield and set the sorcerers against the Wild Hunt in a brutal clash...
Though still helpless against the prophecy of the White Frost, Allen wasn't so reckless as to invite trouble.
"Then let's head back. The young ones are waiting for dinner!"
With a kick of his legs, Vesemir spurred his horse down the country path away from the blue shield.
"It's a shame about cities like Floatsam Port and Ellander, which suffered such unwarranted disasters," Allen remarked, sparing one last glance at Ban Ard's magnificent blue shield before following Vesemir.
But just as he turned away, something unexpected occurred.
In the corner of his vision, Allen caught a flicker of light and instinctively snapped his head back.
The enormous blue shield enveloping half of Ban Ard flickered twice more—then vanished entirely.
"What?!"
Allen blurted out in shock, rubbing his eyes.
The blue shield had truly disappeared.
From the sparsely populated village, exclamations of disbelief and astonishment echoed faintly in every direction.
"It's not an illusion!" Allen exclaimed, stunned.
Vesemir, hearing the commotion, pulled his reins and stopped his horse. "What's wrong, All—"
The master witcher's voice cut off abruptly.
Clearly, he too had noticed the change in Ban Ard.
Allen turned to meet Vesemir's gaze, their eyes reflecting a mix of uncertainty and unspoken thoughts.
"We… we might be fine," Vesemir muttered after a pause, his gaze shifting back to the mysterious City of a Thousand Towers.
"But for those sorcerers in Ban Ard… that's another matter entirely."
.....
📢20 advanced chapters on p@treaon📢
For advance chapters: p@treon.com/Uchiha_Itachi007 (replace @ with a)
327. Were the Witchers' Tracks Exposed?
328. Encounter with the Sorcerer.
329. Vilgefortz.
330. Ancient Blood or the Child of Miracles.
331. Crashing the Necrophage Party.