"So you're the Yavi Kharkov mentioned?"
At that moment, a disheveled, unkempt, gray-haired old man stood opposite Yavi, looking him over nonstop.
"Yes, Professor C. This young man is Yavi."
The gray-haired old man called Professor C continued staring intently at Yavi. "What's so special about this boy that you brought him all the way back here?"
Professor C's stare gave Yavi the creeps, but he stood there without any expression on his face. Six years old that year, standing like a lackey.
"I first met this child on the day he was born. He had a stone in his mouth at birth, and there were magical fluctuations coming from it. Later, though, the stone exploded, but it didn't hurt Yavi..."
Kharkov told Professor C about Yavi and the stone he had been born with. After hearing it all, Professor C nodded silently and said nothing for a long while.
Watching Professor C lower his head in thought, Kharkov showed little restraint. Instead, he invited Yavi to sit down nearby and poured him a cup of warm coffee, indicating that he could help himself to the coffee, pastries, and fruit on the table.
Yavi was indeed feeling a little hungry. Since arriving at Kaer Morhen that morning, he and Kharkov had barely settled in before hurrying straight to Professor C's study, leading to the scene just now. Yavi picked up the coffee and gulped it down. With a cup of warm coffee in his stomach, he immediately felt much more alert, then grabbed a pastry resembling a macaron and took big bites out of it.
Watching Yavi wolf down the food, Kharkov could only feel that the days of traveling had truly put him through a great deal of hardship. Although Yavi had never complained about the journey's hardships or exhaustion, Kharkov had still keenly noticed them. After refilling Yavi's coffee, Kharkov began sipping his own, waiting for Professor C's instructions.
Having eaten and drunk his fill, Yavi tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling in boredom. Kharkov sat there quietly, thinking who knew what, while Professor C, who had been sitting in thought behind his desk, suddenly stood up, strode over to Yavi, and reached out to grab his arm.
With his arm grabbed, Yavi was once again bewildered.
What the hell is this old guy doing? He's not some pervert, is he? I heard medieval priests had a particular liking for little boys...
After that brief contact, Professor C released the arm of Yavi, who was still letting his imagination run wild, then silently shook his head.
Seeing the professor shake his head, Kharkov hurriedly stood up to ask, "Professor C, how is it? Did you discover anything?"
"The child you brought back does indeed have a talent for magic. Unfortunately, fate plays cruel tricks... The magic within this child is the extremely rare Chaos Magic!"
"Chaos Magic..." After hearing that, Kharkov also fell silent.
"Um... could I ask what Chaos Magic is?" Yavi asked somewhat timidly. Although he did not understand what was going on, their conversation and expressions let him roughly guess that this Chaos Magic might not be a very good thing.
"Let me put it this way. Someone with Chaos Magic might spend their entire life unable to effectively control either the magical power within themselves or that between heaven and earth, so most such people are no different from ordinary people." Professor C returned to his desk, sat down, and explained it to Yavi. "But Chaos Magic's greatest characteristic is that when its wielder suffers a fatal injury, all the magical power stored over the years is released at once, in an instant, causing tremendous destruction. You'll find many such examples in your future studies."
After taking a sip of coffee, Professor C continued, "Although you have a talent for magic, you might never be able to cast spells freely in your lifetime. But your affinity for magic is there, after all, so when you undergo the transformation into a witcher in the future, you definitely won't die during the Trial of the Grasses, nor will you suffer much pain. Becoming a witcher is actually a good thing for you. After all, it will give you the ability to protect yourself, so you won't have to worry about hurting the people around you like a ticking time bomb. Finally, you have what it takes to trade your life for anyone else's, so anyone who wants to kill you will have to consider whether they can withstand your explosion."
After listening to Professor C rattle on at length, Yavi felt somewhat speechless. Good grief, my magical talent is just trading one for one? That's one hell of a bad deal. Still, at least Professor C said I have a hundred percent chance of passing the Trial of the Grasses and am guaranteed to become a witcher. That's pretty great too. At least I won't have to die young.
After that long speech, Professor C looked somewhat tired, so he had Kharkov take Yavi back for now.
Once the two returned to Kharkov's room, Kharkov helped straighten out Yavi's bedding again. He had arranged for Yavi to stay in his room so that Yavi would not have to squeeze into communal sleeping quarters like the other children, and it would also make it convenient for Kharkov to observe him at any time.
And so Yavi settled down at Kaer Morhen. During the first few days, he did not take part in any training. Instead, Kharkov took him around to get broadly acquainted with all of Kaer Morhen. At this point, Kaer Morhen had not yet suffered the retaliatory siege from the storyline he knew in his previous life, so overall, it was still relatively prosperous. There were not only witchers here but also ordinary people who attended to the witchers' daily needs. These people were replaced with a new group every ten years. Those arriving and those leaving were all escorted together by witchers, and everyone had to wear a blindfold to prevent Kaer Morhen's location from being exposed.
Besides that, Yavi also learned that all of Kaer Morhen received support from the Duchy of Kaedwen. Professor C had been a royal sorcerer of the Duchy of Kaedwen in earlier years. Because he was advanced in age and had no interest in power struggles, and because the world was in turmoil, with large numbers of monsters roaming among humankind, he had come to Kaer Morhen to help the witchers expand their organization. Apart from Kaer Morhen's School of the Wolf witchers, there were also witchers of the School of the Cat, the School of the Viper, and the School of the Griffin in other regions...
Several peaceful days passed at Kaer Morhen just like that. Although every aspect of life here was less comfortable than at home, fortunately, it was not unbearable-apart from Kharkov's snoring at night, of course.
While Yavi was spending his days in peace, witchers returned to Kaer Morhen one after another, each bringing back some children. Most were boys, with the occasional girl or two. There were now a full twenty-six witchers in Kaer Morhen, while the number of children preparing to undergo witcher training had risen to over sixty. This was the largest training intake in nearly a hundred years. Although there was no telling how many of these sixty-odd little witchers would survive the trials and become true witchers, with a large enough population base, there would eventually be results.