[Life Drain x 21, Experience +315]
[You have reached Level 4. Free Attribute Points +1]
[Swordsmanship has reached Level 2. Your grasp of Tris’s defensive guards and mobile footwork deepens, improving your survivability when hemmed in by multiple foes.]
[Strength +0.5, Agility +0.5]
Will stared at the glowing script, genuinely surprised.
Honing swordcraft in life-or-death combat yielded raw physical attributes without spending an assigned point.
Reflecting on the frantic clash, excitement flared in his chest.
The blade had felt like an extension of his own bones, parries shifting into ripostes as naturally as drawing breath.
Had he faced that timber wolf pack with this footwork, not a single claw would have grazed his hide.
Name: Will
Level: 4
Talent: Fountain of Life (Initial)
Attributes: Vitality 9.0, Strength 6.2, Agility 4.3, Perception 5.2, Magic ?
Skills: Alchemy Lv.1, Swordsmanship Lv.2, Healing Lv.2, Life Meditation, Life Drain
Experience: 135/400
Free Attribute Points: 1
Rather than dumping his spare point into Vitality straight away, he lifted a severed ghoul claw from the pile to inspect the barb.
The toxin was delivered via deep puncture, weeping from narrow ridges along the talon.
Gritting his teeth, he jammed two claws into his forearms.
A dull numbness crept through his veins almost immediately.
The discomfort remained well within his threshold, so he closed his eyes and sank into meditation.
Thump.
Thump.
As his circulating vitality burned through the foreign compound, the gray talons lost their color, turning translucent before his rapidly regenerating tissue pushed the keratin spikes right out of his arms.
Stripping off his ruined, blood-soaked doublet, Will grabbed two fistfuls of claws and jammed them across his chest, shoulders, and ribs, bristling like an angry hedgehog.
An hour later, Will let out a disappointed breath.
His metabolism had accelerated to a freakish degree; the necrophage poison barely produced a tingle anymore.
Another avenue exhausted.
His recollections of beast ecology were far from complete, but he still remembered a few creatures carrying virulent venom: giant armored arachnomorphs, stinging endregas with scorpion tails, ancient archespores spitting corrosive bile, and certain rotfiends.
Tracking those down was pure chance.
Most were foreign terrors swept onto the Continent during the Conjunction of the Spheres, rarely spotted in settled duchies like Lower Sodden.
His gaze drifted to the roaring bonfire.
An odd thought sparked behind his eyes, his pupils widening as he slowly reached his right palm into the dancing red flames.
…
In the timberland beyond the gully, Geralt led the way along a faint deer trail, his mutated senses tracking the night wind. The source of this chapter is g.com.
“Geralt, even if necrophages are roaming the woods, it is no concern of ours,” Yennefer’s voice came sharp with impatience.
“Our business is reaching Ellander without delay.”
“I smell charred ghoul fat,” Geralt replied, his voice a flat, gravelly drawl that carried clean through the gloom.
“Who else purges an entire nest with fire out here? Could be a wandering brother from the road. Worth taking a look.”
“Hold on,” Ciri called out from behind, parting a tangle of briars.
“There is something here.”
A tall brown gelding lay nestled in the fern beds, snoring with deep, heavy rhythm, looking far too comfortable for the haunted woods.
Will’s concentrated life essence had filled its belly better than a bushel of oats.
The trio exchanged puzzled looks; the sight was bizarre even by border standards.
Picking up the heavy scent of tallow and soot, they crested the shale rise and halted before the cavern mouth, greeted by a scene none of them had anticipated.
A young man sat cross-legged at the heart of the roaring pyre, stripped bare to the skin.
His eyes were shut, palms resting easy on his knees, a serene smile resting on his lips.
Strangers still, the raging flames left neither blistering nor soot across his pale skin or fair hair.
As the leaves rustled, his eyelids lifted.
A soft, pale-gold radiance flickered in his round irises, carrying an uncanny, reverent stillness that struck straight through to the soul.
None of them moved.
Nobody uttered a sound.
Until the youth broke the silence.
“Geralt, Yennefer, Ciri? How long do you plan to stand there staring?”
He cleared his throat, an awkward smile breaking his holy facade.
“I don’t think we know each other well enough to be this casual. Would you mind turning around so I can pull on some breeches?”
Will felt heat rush to his ears.
Lost in the novelty of his breakthrough, he had let his guard down completely, only to realize the legendary trio had been treating him like a centerpiece at a gallery.
“Well, now,” Yennefer broke in first, her lips curving into an amused, mocking smirk.
“I never expected to find someone airing their dignity over a bonfire outside a ghoul barrow at midnight. Geralt, the youth of today have remarkably eccentric pastimes. If Dandelion were here, he would have penned three verses before you blinked.”
“Enough staring,” Geralt sighed, turning his broad shoulders to block Ciri’s view with an exasperated roll of his cat eyes.
“Give the lad some privacy.”
Before their arrival, Will had turned an alchemical question over in his mind: was fire immunity not just another aspect of physical conditioning?
He had pressed his bare hand into the coals, enduring ten minutes of blistering agony until something shifted in his marrow.
The raw pain had receded into a warm hum.
Emboldened, he had doused himself in lamp oil, stripped his rags, and sat right in the flames.
He had nearly passed out from the opening shock, the heat tearing at his outer dermis layer by layer until his vitality locked into overdrive.
Having endured the crucible, common campfire heat now felt no hotter than a sulfur bath; to build further tolerance, he would likely have to take a swim in molten slag.
As the embers died down, Will pulled fresh trousers and a clean linen shirt from his bedroll. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Stepping through the gray smoke, he presented himself as a tall, fair-haired youth standing close to six feet.
“Geralt of Rivia, Yennefer of Vengerberg, and Cirilla of Cintra. An honor to meet you all.”
On the Continent, claiming an origin was the quickest way to establish standing.
‘Of Rivia’ was just an affectation Geralt had pulled out of thin air to sound legitimate, having spent his youth behind the walls of Kaer Morhen.
Will stepped forward with an open smile.
Nenneke’s raven had clearly brought the trio north ahead of schedule, the three tragic figures who sat at the very heart of the Continent’s destiny.
He had half hoped old Vesemir might ride alongside them, longing to meet the ancient living fossil of the School of the Wolf, but this company was formidable enough.
All three possessed striking features.
Both Yennefer and Ciri carried the refined cheekbones of Elder blood.
Geralt was the son of the sorceress Visenna.
Between his uncanny magical resilience and his rugged grace, the White Wolf had tangled with more sorceresses than any man alive, earning himself plenty of bawdy tavern nicknames across the North.
“You carry no witcher medallion,” Geralt observed, golden eyes narrowing with guarded curiosity.
“Who are you? And how do you know the girl?”
“A hint, then: ten winters ago, right across the noon table.”
Will smiled, folding his hands across his chest in Melitele’s traditional sign of devotion.
The fog in Geralt’s memory cleared in an instant, snapping back to that autumn noon in Ellander: an infant manifesting above the refectory boards, bruised and lacerated, before a wave of verdant light sealed every wound on his throat.
“By the gods… it’s you? Nenneke wrote that you had woken, but I could hardly credit the ink. I rode through Ellander a few seasons back and saw you still asleep on the cot.”
“You came a touch early, then. The day my eyes opened, the screams shook the attic floorboards. You missed quite a commotion.”
A faint grin touched Will’s lips.
When his awareness had returned, he had sat on the edge of the mattress in a daze.
A novice’s shriek had brought half the sanctuary scrambling up the stairs, treating him like an unearthed relic until Nenneke waded into the crowd with her quarterstaff to restore order.
“A pity I missed it. Nenneke rarely loses her temper like that. Given how pious those sisters are, I half expected them to embalm you in cedar oil and keep you on the altar for the next two centuries.”
“I thought the same. Truth be told, it was probably Nenneke’s endless nagging that dragged me back from the dark. Even the goddess grew sick of hearing her complain.”
“Ha! Don’t let her hear you say that, or she’ll have you reciting the litanies until sunrise.”
A shared chuckle broke between them.
Geralt had an easy magnetism about him, aided by extraordinary fortune; his mother was one of the rare practitioners capable of bearing a child.
His trials had been unique as well.
Alone among his cohort, Geralt had retained his capacity for emotion while surviving secondary mutations that fortified his frame far beyond standard witcher baselines.
To the common rabble, he was a cold, cynical killer for hire.
In truth, the man possessed an iron loyalty to his comrades, an instinctive urge to shield the weak, and a habit of getting swept into messy romances, accompanied by a dry, pitch-black sense of humor.
“My name is Will. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Will offered an open palm toward the three travelers.
“Hold out your hands. I have a small welcoming gift for our road together.”