Do Not Empathize with Your Enemies

"Glory to the Alder Folk!!!"

A ball of white flame suddenly burst forth from the dense forest with lightning speed.

The fire roared.

The intense Mental Fluctuation emanated from it swept past, as if it were also burning.

The already crumbling divine wall in Ailin's mind collapsed instantly.

No! That's not fire!

Flames have no glory, nor the rage to burn the world and destroy everything.

That was the Wild Hunt that had been pushed away by Eredin and fled.

He returned, bringing with him an even more intense heat than when he left.

And he was still burning, burning more and more intensely.

Ailin had never known that a body of flesh and blood could be more dazzling than the sun in the sky.

The forest clearing, which was usually a hellish place filled with dark, charcoal wood, was now as bright as day.

Even behind him, a path of flames seemed to be paved with lava.

"Buzz buzz buzz~"

The stealth and silence were instantly broken, and the Wolf Emblem emitted a sharp whistle.

But nobody cares about that right now.

Standing beside Sera's corpse, Jared turned back in terror. Andeni desperately tried to run towards the Magic Ritual carpet. Vilgefortz and Miguel, as if recognizing the Wild Hunt state, simultaneously stretched out their staffs in horror, pointing them straight to the sky...

Even Ailin herself didn't bother to hide it.

After the Wild Hunt charged out, an intense sense of crisis seemed to solidify into a tangible chill, instantly seeping from the tailbone to the scalp, as if countless sharp steel needles were pressed against the bare, unprotected skin all over the body...

He dared not even consider why the guidance of fate and the Wild Hunt were not in the same direction, and he didn't even dare to turn around and run away, because the desperate throbbing of his senses gave him a strong, absurd premonition.

There's no way to escape!

There's no way they can escape!

Even though he was thirty meters away from the wizard, and there were earthen mounds, charcoal, and stones to shield him...

Ailin desperately extracted magic from the Mutated Organ, his arms trembling as he stretched them forward and crossed them in front of his chest.

Oterrohp Sign!

He almost shouted it out loud, as if doing so would speed up the formation of the magical barrier.

A pale purple, transparent, spherical protective shield just formed from the soles of my feet...

The incandescent flame, as bright as the sun, had reached Sera's corpse, and of course, it had also reached the side of the wizard Jared.

The wizard frantically waved his staff in an attempt to struggle, but his pupils, dilated with fear, were filled with death.

He knew he was doomed, and he finally understood the meaning behind the words left behind by the monster Eredin before he left.

[Hopefully at least one person can deliver this message to your leader.]

This is not a message left for them at all!

"Sera!"

His spirit surged explosively, and in an instant, Wild Hunt spread his limbs, radiating an even more explosive light.

The whole world seemed to fall silent for a moment because of this.

Then...

The surrounding Fire Element was so active that it was as if a live volcano had suddenly erupted.

Ailin felt a blinding white light flash before his eyes, causing him to instinctively close them.

"Boom!!!"

The ringing in my ears lasted for less than a second, followed by a dizzying buzzing sound.

He didn't even realize that the Oterrohp Sign had been broken.

My body suddenly felt light, like a kite floating in the wind, or even like scraps of paper being blown away.

It seemed like we hit countless obstacles along the way, probably trees.

But Ailin felt no pain at all; he simply curled up in his usual defensive posture, letting his body bounce around like a ball.

He even wondered for a moment why he felt no burning sensation at all.

Then, in the next moment, a brilliant idea struck him...

Perhaps it wasn't that there was no pain or burning, but rather that his sense of touch hadn't had time to react.

When he realized this, a sudden pain surged through his limbs and bones.

But pain is a good thing; at least it means he's still alive.

Without realizing it, my body suddenly felt heavy.

Ailin forced open his eyes despite the pain, only to be met with a series of afterimages, each one radiating intense heat. This made him feel extremely nauseous and dizzy, and he instinctively closed his eyes again.

He reached into the medicine bag to take out a potion to heal his wounds, but only touched shards of crystal and glass.

Ailin's heart skipped a beat, and after rubbing his chest inward again, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He retrieved the potion he desired from a deeper compartment inside—the Swallow Potion.

Name: Swallow

[Type: Potion]

[Function: Accelerates life regeneration; life regeneration stops for two seconds during strenuous activity.]

[Note: The blood vial has arrived!]

He uncorked the bottle, forced himself to endure the dizziness and nausea, and drank the potion in one gulp.

After swallowing the warm liquid, it took Ailin nearly half a minute for the dizziness, nausea, and other abnormal symptoms to gradually subside.

"What a huge loss!" This was Ailin's first thought after she regained full consciousness.

The Witcher's Handbook inventory can only store items that are entirely derived from the Witcher's Handbook, such as Essence Fluid and Purification Spirit.

Other items, including potions obtained by crafting potion recipes from treasure chests, cannot be stored there.

So he specially asked Lady Vesemir to make the reagent bags.

Ordinary vibrations and impacts will not damage the internal potions, bombs, and Sword Oil.

But this time is obviously an exception.

Fortunately, Swallow Potion, being one of the less commonly used potions, always requires being out of combat to take effect, and being a rare healing potion, it's necessary to carry some with me.

So it was kept at the bottom of the box and placed at the very back, thus escaping disaster.

Otherwise, he would have really been in trouble this time.

However, the broken potions placed around the outside of the reagent bag were all extremely precious potions such as Blizzard and Giant Ghoul Decoction.

The Wild Hunt suffered devastating losses from this self-destruction.

"It's good that I'm alive..." Ailin comforted herself.

"But it's time to think about spatial items, or how to open up the inventory."

"Fortunately, this was just a preliminary exploration, and I didn't plan to fight, so I only brought some commonly used potion combinations, just in case."

"Otherwise, what if they brought North Wind bombs and other types of bombs..."

He shivered.

The swallows were working; the "beep-beep" noise in my ears was gradually fading away.

However, he still couldn't hear the sounds around him clearly, only some very vague sounds, as if they were coming from across the water.

Unlike in the game, swallows are not a panacea for healing.

There won't be a health bar. Once the health bar is full, minor scratches, severed limbs, and fractures can all be miraculously restored.

No.

The Swallow Potion simply doubles the Witcher's already absurd regenerative abilities, nothing more.

Once the effects of the medicine had fully taken hold, Ailin tried to open his eyes.

The double images gradually merged into one after a long while.

He seemed to have been blown a hundred meters away from the battlefield by the explosion, with a familiar stream right in front of him.

Burning wood scraps and strange black substances of unknown composition were scattered all around.

When he looked up.

Through the sparse trees in front of him, he saw...

Where the Wild Hunt camp used to be, there were no Wild Hunt, no corpses, no warlocks, only a crater twenty meters in diameter that had been blasted out.

Crimson lava still flows inside the pit.

However, Ailin knew that Wild Hunt was definitely dead, and even if he didn't know what that sun-like state was, he was willing to bet on it.

But the wizards are definitely not dead.

It wasn't because he saw any traces, but because the Witcher's Handbook hadn't settled the score for him.

This shows that the threat from the enemy has not disappeared.

"They're really resilient..." he thought to himself, "I'm so far away, and I've been seriously injured despite all the obstacles in my way."

Then, with a thought, "Night" instantly concealed his presence, and the ancient elven artifact from Francesca remained undamaged.

He glanced at it just now and saw that the Wolf School Master Set only had some charred marks, and the internal damage should not be too great.

"The Oterrohp Sign did work after all," he thought.

Just as he was feeling the pain subside and was about to stand up, he was struck by a sharp, dull pain in his back and limbs, causing his vision to go black for a moment.

"Hiss~"

With a cry of pain, and amidst the Mental Fluctuation, he exited the "Night·Color" stealth and silence state.

Under the influence of Ailin's [Demon Hunter] state, a large amount of blood stasis accumulated on his back, and many muscle fibers in his limbs were partially torn.

"It must have been blown away and then crashed into a tree and the ground."

However, such injuries cannot be treated with Swallow's Elixir in a short time; they require a period of rest and recuperation.

Although every movement was painful and his limbs were weak, he still staggered to his feet and slowly walked toward the direction that fate had pointed him to.

As for the life or death of those male witches, he no longer cared.

Nothing else went wrong.

Following the guidance of fate, Ailin successfully moved to the depths of the dense forest, to the foot of an unremarkable white birch tree.

After digging for nearly three minutes with great difficulty, I finally picked up a plain, unremarkable black stone.

"Bite!"

"Fragment of the Gate of Ade Gais detected. Absorb?"

Hearing the reassuring notification in her mind, Ailin took a couple of breaths and relaxed her tense nerves.

At the same time, the guidance of fate vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.

"Fate..."

He sadly buried the traces of the excavation, about to collect the fragments of the Gate of Ade Gais...

Etc!

My still somewhat groggy and dizzy mind was jolted awake, as if I had been doused with a bucket of cold water.

Since the Wild Hunt buried the fragments of the Ard Gais Gate here, they must have a way of tracking them; we can't just take them back like this.

But to Ailin, it looked like an ordinary stone, and the surrounding environment was no different from any dense forest.

After thinking for a moment, he communicated with the Wolf Emblem telepathically.

From the perspective of the element, he then saw a strange tree-shaped rune depicted on the black stone.

"There really is something fishy going on!"

However, after several simple attempts, he was unable to remove the rune.

then.

He gritted his teeth and walked for a while in the opposite direction of the blazing fire.

"Bite!"

"Fragment of the Gate of Ade Gais detected. Absorb?"

He refused to believe that the Witcher's Handbook was the best way to remove the mark.

These runes can also be engraved onto the Witcher's Handbook.

Absorb!

The moment after a thought clicks.

The gem floated up from Ailin's palm and then vanished into thin air.

[Ding! The fragment of the Gate of Ad-Gates is being absorbed...]

for a long time.

No further information appeared on the semi-transparent panel in front of us.

"It seems I need some time to absorb it."

The absence of any major disturbance relieved Ailin.

"I wonder how many of those four wizards are still alive..." He stood up with difficulty, looking back in the direction he had come from. "Is Vilgefortz still alive?"

Vilgefortz must be alive.

Ailin shook his head.

The Wild Hunt exploded near Sera, while Vilgefortz was the furthest from the blast.

If any male wizards survive, he must be one of them.

However, even if they survive, the male wizards of Ban Ade will certainly not have an easy time.

After all, the power of the self-destruction, even from such a distance, severely injured him.

Thinking of that horrific self-destruction, Ailin couldn't help but appear somewhat dazed.

"Glory to the Alder Folk!!!"

"Sera!"

The heart-wrenching roar still seems to echo in my ears.

The Alder Folk, also known as Ain El.

In Ailin's mind, they had always been wicked conquerors, destroyers, and massacre thugs...

But today, he has never felt so vividly that his enemy is so real.

He doesn't even need you to kill him; he will burn his entire life out of some thought.

Although this was something Ailin was happy to see, and even something he personally promoted.

but...

Why did he choose to turn back and perish with the wizards after leaving and hiding the fragments of the Gate of Ade Gais?

What was he thinking at that moment?

Was it because he didn't want the body of the female elf named Sera to be defiled that he came back?

Whether it's outdated love, friendship with comrades, or mission failure, the death of companions, and a refusal to live on...

He experienced several emotions, including some he couldn't even imagine...

Upon closer examination, the Ain El people were ultimately just a group of pitiful people who lost their homes and fled in disarray because of the White Frost...

"Shh~"

Out of the corner of his eye, Ailin suddenly noticed a bush trembling unnaturally.

Just as I became alert, a rabbit darted out from among them.

He shook his head, trying to shake off the strange feelings in his mind.

This wasn't the first time Ailin had killed someone.

But the way the people who died today died was too shocking.

Now, the cold wind has suddenly calmed me down.

"Do you have the right to pity the Wild Hunt, which has conquered so many worlds?"

"A simple self-destruction by Wild Hunt can leave you severely injured."

"Your current strength, the strength of the School of the Wolf, is not much different from that of this rabbit in their eyes."

"Ailin".

He took a deep breath and warned himself:

Never empathize with your enemy!

then.

He looked up and glanced at it again.

Thick black smoke, mixed with scarlet flames, shot straight into the sky in the darkness.

He sighed, turned around, and chanted a spell in a low voice.

"Bang!"

An orange-red portal appeared in the woods, accompanied by howling winds.

Ailin stepped into the portal.

That is, the instant your feet completely step into the portal.

"Bite!"

[Slay the monster "Aion El" and the "Warlock"!]

[Reward Settlement:...]