Ailin closed his eyes.
Through the Mutated Organ beside his nose, scents painted a vibrant picture in his mind.
That cluster of blue arcs was the stream.
That green line was the grassland.
And those impossibly deep brown blocks were the scent of dark soil.
Ailin had never understood synesthesia, a rhetorical device shared by both worlds, so profoundly.
He felt as if he had crossed worlds again, as if he had been reborn once more.
The Trial of the Mountains, the heavy burden that had weighed on his heart, seemed much lighter as well.
Ailin immersed himself in the world of scents. Only after a long while did he open his eyes.
Vesemir and Leto stood smiling on the grass, waiting for him to return from the realm of heightened senses.
"How does it feel?" Vesemir asked.
"Fantastic!" Ailin answered without hesitation, then emphasized, "Like new!"
Ailin's words somehow struck Leto as hilarious.
"Hahaha, you're quite the wordsmith, Apprentice. So refined—you sound like a wizard. Who did you learn that fr—"
"Leto! Do you really have a death wish?"
"Sorry, I forgot again." Leto looked miserable as he apologized at once.
Being unable to speak freely seemed harder on him than being killed.
Leto's pitiful expression, coupled with the joy of discovering a new world, made Ailin laugh despite himself.
Hearing his apprentice laugh, Vesemir froze for a few seconds before bursting into hearty laughter as well.
Only Leto remained with his face hanging, staring at the laughing master and apprentice like a resentful wife, utterly unable to do anything about them.
The autumn sun slanted westward.
Red twilight shone through the branches of dead trees and fell upon the Witcher Apprentice.
Once they finished dealing with this batch of drowners, Ailin and the others would return to Kaer Morhen.
No, that was not quite right. It should have been Ailin and Vesemir returning to Kaer Morhen.
Before the spring equinox arrived, Leto would set off alone on his journey of playing hide-and-seek with the Sorceress.
Slash!
A dagger flashing with cold light severed the last Drowner Tongue.
Ailin placed it in the Material Bag.
By then,
Vesemir and Leto had also knocked out all the drowners they had selected and stuffed them into sacks.
"Come on, Ailin. Let's go home." Vesemir patted the sack in his hand and called out.
Leto gazed affectionately in the direction of Kaer Morhen. "Going home... I want to go back to Kaer Morhen too."
"Then come back with us!" Ailin joked.
During the afternoon hunt, Ailin and Leto had already become fast friends.
Vesemir might still have carried some of a mentor's restraint, but Leto had completely let himself go.
As he put it, "If I can't talk, I might as well die. Would Lady Vesemir really kill me?"
Though he spoke without thinking, Witcher Leto was definitely someone trustworthy.
Or perhaps Leto was trustworthy precisely because he spoke without thinking?
Ailin pondered it for a long time before deciding it was an unsolvable question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, and tossed it to the back of his mind.
Leto rolled his eyes at that, sighed mournfully, and said nothing.
At Vesemir's instruction, Leto picked up the two sacks and headed back.
Ailin carried a sack as well and followed behind the two witchers.
Seeing that neither of them was paying attention to him, Ailin took the opportunity to open the Witcher's Handbook and sort through his gains.
Name: Ailin Level: 4 Special Skill: Witcher's Handbook LV1, Appraisal LV1, Tracking LV1 Skills: School of the Wolf Two-Handed Sword LV2, Quen LV1, Tracking LV1 Items: Drowner Heart Essence Fluid*29, Lesser Experience Orbs*134, Drowner Whistle*2... Evaluation: Trash!!
So there really were two Tracking skills!
Ailin focused and sensed them carefully.
Though their names were identical, they were fundamentally two entirely different skills.
The Special Skill Tracking was a body of knowledge attached to the Witcher's Handbook.
It could be said that it was an instruction manual for using the Witcher's Handbook to track targets.
The ordinary Tracking skill was more akin to following prey's traces by developing a witcher's mutated senses.
By comparing these two skills, Ailin gained a deeper understanding of the difference between the Witcher's Handbook's Special Skills and ordinary skills.
The two types of skills differed greatly.
Yet in Ailin's mind, the greatest difference came down to just one thing.
Ordinary skills belonged to Ailin, while Special Skills belonged to the Witcher's Handbook.
Even without the Witcher's Handbook, Ailin could still use skills such as the two-handed sword, Quen, and ordinary Tracking.
But as for Witcher's Handbook, Appraisal, and Special Tracking, Ailin did not even know the principles behind how they worked, much less master them.
Though the Witcher's Handbook was his cheat, being unable to fully control those Special Skills sometimes gave Ailin a faint sense of losing control.
Of course.
That did not stop the Witcher Apprentice from making use of it. Right now, the most important thing was passing the Trial of the Mountains.
Thinking of the trial, Ailin sighed inwardly and turned his attention to the Lesser Experience Orbs.
They had found three groups of drowners in total that afternoon. Aside from the first eight, thirteen had died beneath Ailin's sword.
Unfortunately, without the quest bonus—and with his character level having risen again—the evaluations for the remaining two exterminations had not been high.
The best items from the chests had merely been Drowner Whistles.
I'm still 9,890 Lesser Experience Orbs away from unlocking alchemy. Today's haul was only around a hundred... Ailin calculated silently.
Still not enough!
Unless the morning alchemy lesson reduced the requirement by ten more Lesser Experience Orbs each day than it had the day before.
Lost in thought, Ailin reached the fork where it was time to say goodbye.
"Vesemir, Ailin, I'm leaving."
Leto raised his head to look at the towering castle in the distance, then turned to bid them farewell.
"Maybe things aren't that bad. Lady Vesemir actually has a pretty good temper..."
Having just made a friend only to see him leave, Ailin was reluctant to part with him and tried to persuade him to stay.
Though the Sorceress was said by witchers to be vengeful and vicious, Ailin had always thought of Lady Vesemir as an intellectual woman.
Especially after she began dressing more conservatively, she looked much like the graduate students from his former world—except she did not wear glasses.
With Lady Vesemir's looks, she would definitely have been the prettiest one.
"Ailin..." Vesemir stopped him. "I believe Lady Vesemir is not as frightening as the rumors say, but it won't matter. Leto has to leave."
"Why? Even if Lady Vesemir really knows, I can still plead for Leto..."
"Hahaha, Ailin, I didn't expect you to be this reluctant to let me go!" Leto laughed loudly and vigorously rubbed Ailin's black hair, cutting him off.
Ailin struggled with all his strength, but he was still ruthlessly petted like a blue-eyed kitten for over ten seconds.
He was still far weaker than Leto.
"But there's no need." Leto released Ailin. "Vesemir is right. If I don't leave, that's when there'll be real trouble. It has nothing to do with the Sorceress's personality."
He raised a hand to stop Ailin from trying to persuade him further.
Facing the golden, reddening sunset, Leto put on a carefree air, turned around, and headed down the mountain.
But after only two steps, he turned back to Ailin, smiled, and said:
"Ailin!"
"Next year, I'll definitely see you at the long table in the castle hall."
It was a certainty, not a question.
After pausing for a moment, Ailin answered with solemnity, as if responding to a question.
"I will, Leto."
"Next year, you'll definitely see me again."
"I definitely will."
New author, new book—please follow, comment, bookmark, and vote monthly!
Before you continue