[Chapter Size: 1900 Words.]
Third Person POV
Northern kingdoms.
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Madara sighed as he surveyed the chaotic scene, with fire consuming the entire forest in front of him, growing ever larger, while the area around him was littered with ninja weapons. He noticed a sword still gleaming on the ground, attached to it a silver necklace with a viper emblem.
"At least this will be useful..." Madara said in a weary tone.
A system message appeared, and without hesitation, he clicked to reap many benefits from defeating such an opponent, evolving as his chakra reserves swelled alarmingly. 'This will be very useful...' Madara murmured as he began to remove the threads from his mouth, with the witcher dead, there was no longer any reason to keep these useless threads.
Now stronger, he distributed his chakra throughout his body, a technique he used to counteract the poison's effects. His training over the past year had opened some doors for him, and Madara had learned that he could hold off poisons and had even asked Mousesack to assist him many times, obtaining low-level poisons and escalating to deadly ones as Madara progressed.
Madara approached the sword on the ground in the middle of the area and picked it up. There was also an iron sword, probably charred, next to the fallen body, but as far as he could see, it bore no runes; it was just a good blade, which wasn't very useful to him. So, he strapped the sword to his back and picked up a paper, then began to leave the area, heading towards the forest.
'This guy was hired... but hid the gold somewhere if he got any in advance...' Madara reasoned as he continued walking, but soon set that thought aside since there was no way for him to find that money.
While walking, he could still feel the poison's effects, but he kept moving forward, prepared to head to Cintra, able to endure a few more days with the poison.
However, just as he was about to start leaping through the trees to return to the capital, he noticed a disturbance in the forest, prompting him to grab one of his last kunais along with the only remaining short sword he had, the silver one.
Then the space continued to distort about 100 meters away, and a burst of magic occurred with a portal appearing, and in the next moment, a girl ran past him.
"Wait, Ciri! It could be dangerous!" Mousesack exclaimed, coming out of the portal soon after.
Cirilla ignored Mousesack and continued to scan the forest for any sign of Madara, as a huge wildfire raged in the distance. "Madara must be there!" She exclaimed.
"I'm here." Then a figure landed in front of her, startling her slightly as Mousesack approached. He looked at them both with a raised eyebrow. "What are you doing here?" he asked, crossing his arms after he had put away his weapons.
Cirilla responded before Mousesack, looking at him as she approached with a concerned gaze, assessing if Madara was alright. "I had a dream about you! I saw that you would be poisoned," she exclaimed. "So I asked Uncle Mousesack for help, you're poisoned!" She accused in the last part, while Madara raised an eyebrow.
'Well, she's not wrong...' Mandara considered as he looked at the surprised girl.
"What happened to you, boy?" Mousesack stepped closer, shifting his gaze from the boy to look forward as the forest burned in the distance. "That sword, did you manage to defeat the enemy?" He asked, glancing at the necklace tied to the sword nearly as tall as Madara.
"Yes, as you can see, a witcher from the School of the Viper," Madara spoke while Cirilla looked at him suspiciously. He turned his gaze back to her. "I'm poisoned if you want to know..." He said as she widened her eyes.
"Are you going to die?!" She exclaimed, slightly frightened.
"I will." Madara spoke dryly. "In a week..." He clarified, after all, his chakra was so powerful that a poison that would kill a person in 5 minutes, he could withstand for that long.
"Good job, boy. But we need to address this quickly..." Mousesack spoke seriously and then looked ahead. "Just wait a moment, while I go and stop this fire." He said, heading towards the flames, leaving Madara and Cirilla behind.
"Are you really okay?" Cirilla asked, her voice filled with concern.
"Yes." He replied simply.
"How was the fight? Did you really defeat a witcher like Geralt?" She suddenly shifted from her tone of concern to one of curiosity.
"Challenging... if you must know... I've never faced anyone so powerful before." Madara admitted, though he could take pride in having taken down a witcher of many years at just the age of eight.
He looked back at the girl and had an idea. "Can you use your abilities...? I need to know where the witcher stored his money." Madara asked, while Cirilla looked at him and nodded.
She closed her eyes and reopened them ten seconds later. "It's near a waterfall, there's a tree with red leaves at the edge of it, the place is so beautiful! Can you take me there?" She asked, then remembered she had to mention where the money was. "The witcher buried the box of gold coins beneath the tree." She said, and he nodded, memorizing this in his mind.
Mousesack spent some time clearing the fire from the forest, and finally, he returned. "Let's go, we need to treat your poison." Mousesack said and opened a portal with his staff right after, Madara looked at the portal with distaste but ended up following Cirilla; he didn't want to spend days in that condition traveling to the capital after just arriving.
Entering the portal, they appeared in front of Cintra's castle while the people around noticed the three emerging, with Madara trying not to vomit and they went straight to Mousesack's Laboratory.
Cirilla stayed there while they tried to find a cure for the poison, studying Madara's blood. It took a few hours until they finally found a way to combat and neutralize the poison.
"It's amazing how your energy can have negative effects on your body..." Mousesack remarked.
Mousesack gave Madara some ideas about his chakra, which led him to develop new abilities from Mousesack's feedback. So much so, he managed to learn the transformation jutsu, but somehow, he could only transform into objects, not people. However, it was still something he learned outside the system, which was quite good for him.
So much so that he used this jutsu to transform his original form into a shuriken and throw it at the wizard, almost killing him with it. Additionally, Madara began to develop his chakra even more than usual, as a druid, Mousesack had a stronger connection with spirituality than the mages.
Madara continued the treatment after this and ended up spending the night in the castle, sleeping in the laboratory while finishing cleaning all the poison from his blood. When he woke up the next day, he found himself next to a chair filled with the little girl with platinum blonde hair.
He looked at her for a moment, admitting to himself that she really did care about him, which made him crack a small smile, just as she opened her eyes at that moment.
"You smiled!" she accused him immediately.
As Mandara closed the smile the next moment, looking at her as if he hadn't done anything and she was seeing things, "I don't know what you're talking about..." he said, somewhat proudly.
"No, you smiled. I saw you smiling!" She shouted again as if it was a victory to see Madara smile.
"It was an illusion I put on you," he said in a neutral tone.
"No! I was pretending to be asleep to spy on you!" she exclaimed.
"I don't believe it, I saw you were drooling," Mandara teased.
"Drooling? I was not drooling!" she quickly denied, while Madara nodded, acknowledging that she was quickly changing the subject.
After that, they stayed a while longer as Mousesack returned to speak with Madara. It seemed that Cintra had indeed entered a state of war, with everything stirred up and countless crows leaving the castle to contact all the nobles to summon their vassals.
Angren still strongly accused Cintra of attacking the king in an assassination attempt. Therefore, nobles from all corners of the kingdom were called to the capital with a call to arms.
Over the next month, Madara attended some of these meetings. He met Lord Hugkil, a noble from the south whom he had saved over a year ago from the atrocious ghoul. The man arrived with his family, always maintaining a cheerful expression and demeanor. "Madara, it's been a while since I've seen you. I heard about the things that happened in the capital and must say it was incredible to hear all that," he said with a smile, while his eldest son remained silent, looking at Madara with caution.
'Be careful with your brother...' He still remembered Madara's words and didn't understand them, even thinking that Madara might want to do something to his family, despite never having seen him again.
The youngest son, meanwhile, stared at Madara with intense eyes, but Madara did not care, believing the boy was just an insect unworthy of his attention.
This was a meeting in the audience hall, while Madara watched the nobles approach the queen and make their oaths for war, although many there were greedy for the Chip family's properties, since their family had lost all titles and rights, the lands belonged to the crown, but everyone knew the queen could not handle it alone.
His gaze finally fell on the next man making his war oath, and as soon as he finished, Madara and this man exchanged a glance for a second, both with a hostile shimmer, as the man quickly returned to his place, leaving Madara's gaze behind.
Cirilla approached Madara at that moment, "Why did you two look at each other like that?" She noticed both of them staring.
"He is the father of Junlian Rushford, who was killed by the wizard, but the man wants his revenge against me, yet he hasn't been very successful, after all, he was the one who hired the witcher to kill me," Madara explained, leaving Cirilla shocked.
He knew this because he had taken the contract from the witcher's clothing while they fought, unnoticed. It was a bounty order he had received, a form of contract so that neither party would misunderstand what they expected from the service, both signing the sheet. Witchers used this when the reward was much higher than usual.
He could use this against the noble by going to the queen, but it would be pointless. So, he kept silent, as he could retaliate in another way, and it would not be pretty. Cintra entering another political crisis with one of the great nobles after being at war.
The meeting ended, and finally, the armies began to organize over the next few months. The greatest force of Cintra was all concentrated to the east, and the queen herself, along with East, would lead the battle force for Cintra, with an army of 15,000 men.
Madara stayed in the capital, still training, now that he had received a greater reward than any other, trying to become stronger and get accustomed to his new jutsus and knowledge.