"What did you think of the Trial of the Grasses?" The Mage's abrupt question caught the old man off guard. He quickly recovered and narrowed his eyes. "Nothing in particular. Why do you ask?"
"Because I wanted to know how a Witcher mentor viewed a ritual that was necessary, yet incomparably cruel and had such a high mortality rate."
Vesemir fell silent. He was intimately familiar with the Trial of the Grasses—the kind of familiarity he never wanted to revisit.
The full process of the Trial of the Grasses was as follows: after young Witcher apprentices consumed a special alchemical decoction known as "Grass," their bodies and physiological structures underwent highly unusual and severe changes. Grass affected the nervous system, so a powerful Mage or master-level alchemist had to oversee the entire process.
The trial triggered lightning-fast chain reactions. Ordinary people simply did not have the reflexes needed to respond to the various changes the apprentices experienced during the process. Moreover, it was an immensely painful ordeal. The Trial of the Grasses usually had a survival rate of only thirty percent; even at Kaer Morhen's peak, it had only reached forty percent. That was already the highest success rate possible. The few apprentices who survived still had to undergo mutagenic alterations, and that was no easy process either.
The Trial of the Grasses lasted roughly seven days. After that, they underwent mutagenic transformation, and only then could that stage truly be considered complete.
But what if the Trial of the Grasses failed?
Believe me, even the strongest person would never want to witness that scene. Over Vesemir's long life, he had watched countless children meet miserable deaths because they could not endure it. Their bodies twisted and swelled as they let out screams of unimaginable agony—the gentlest death was exploding