After a lunch break of nearly two hours, his enhanced constitution had recovered from most of the morning's fatigue. Chen Xu got up and headed toward the river running through White Orchard.
His understanding of the Witcher world's forging system was still incomplete. Although he could design weapons himself, he risked getting half the results for twice the effort if his designs did not fit this world's system.
If circumstances allowed, he would certainly have preferred to research original weapons, but time was tight, and he could not afford to waste any.
In the original game, a lost treasure chest lay hidden in this river, the Ismena. Inside it, a finely crafted silver sword called Moonblade had lain gathering dust.
It came with three rune slots, making it more than suitable as a template for his first weapon.
However, large numbers of drowners prowled the river, and a Chosen had just died in their jaws. Diving in recklessly would be pure suicide.
He ran to the butcher's house and spent five crowns on dozens of jin of foul-smelling offal, pig bladders, and pig's blood.
These things would naturally be worth something to Chihuang's food lovers, but the lower classes in this world did not know how to remove the smell and mostly fed them to dogs.
Five crowns bought a whole heap.
He crossed Woesong Bridge at the village entrance. As a blacksmith's apprentice, he was now half a free man in the eyes of the Nilfgaardian army.
The moment he left the village, the cruelty of war became distinctly apparent.
Countless "non-surrenderers" and spies had been hanged by the Nilfgaardians from wooden posts along the road, like streetlights lining Blue Star's roads.
The river gave off an indescribable stench of rot and blood, with countless decomposing corpses and wronged souls rising and sinking within it.
Near the pontoon bridge spanning the banks, several dark, bluish-green shadows that looked almost like fish prowled the river. Chen Xu dumped a basket of flesh and blood onto the riverbank, then quickly ran away.
Bubbles soon rose to the surface, as though the river were boiling.
Hideous, terrifying heads emerged from the water. All the nearby drowners had been drawn over by the flesh and blood!
While the monsters feasted, Chen Xu slipped quietly into the water some distance away and dived toward the riverbed.
[You have learned the skill [Underwater Swimming] Lv.1]
The notification chime never failed to appear. Chen Xu was gradually growing accustomed to the hot, swollen feeling ordinary skills brought to his brain, and soon spotted the outline of a chest half hidden among the waterweeds.
An unsheathed silver sword, a bulging bag of coins, and a roll of silk.
With no time for a closer look, he gathered the items in his arms and hurried toward the surface.
"Aaaargh-"
He had not expected the drowners to eat so absurdly fast. Once they had finished sharing their free afternoon tea, their sensitivity to underwater movements returned, and they immediately realized someone was running wild in their territory!
The drowners approached with howls. Chen Xu stopped trying to keep quiet and swam desperately for the bank.
Were these things bottomless pits? They'd finished dozens of jin of flesh and blood in less than a minute!
The river was still deep enough to cover his chest, but the drowners' claws were already within reach! He tossed aside the things in his arms and rolled forward with his newly acquired silver sword in hand.
But the water offered too much resistance. His roll was neither fast nor complete enough. A cold sensation swept over his shoulder-a drowner had torn away a strip of flesh!
Fortunately, he had reached the bank, where he could move far more freely.
Facing the drowners closing in around him, Chen Xu pushed [Dodge] to its limit. Four maximum-distance rolls, each in a different direction, barely carried him out of their encirclement, but he still could not shake them off.
He activated [Detection]. They were only Lv.3 drowners, but as monsters whose bonuses mainly went to strength, their legs had far more explosive power than his.
An ordinary person could maintain maximum exertion for roughly ten seconds. For some, it could only be described as an instant.
His stamina could never sustain such strenuous rolls any longer.
[You have used Experience ×200. Current [Detective] Lv.4, Constitution +1, Reaction +1, Free Attribute Points +1]
Unable to escape, Chen Xu raised his sword to meet the enemy.
The two drowners in front of him tensed their well-developed leg muscles. Their hunger for fresh flesh and territorial instincts overrode their innate fear of silver, and they pounced without restraint.
These humanoid monsters did not have much reach. Chen Xu dodged sideways and used the blade of his sword to block the other drowner's claws.
[You have learned the proficiency [Armed Combat] at beginner level. When fighting with weapons, dodge efficiency +5%, block efficiency +25%]
Armed Combat, my ass!
Chen Xu nearly spat blood. Fine, it was not [Sword Technique], but why did it have to sound like a bunch of thugs brawling?
[Armed Combat] seemed to turn the sword in Chen Xu's hand into a fire poker, without the slightest trace of grace or fluidity.
Seizing an opening, he brought the silver sword smashing down in anger. But the slime coating the drowner provided considerable protection. The vertically descending blade slipped aside and only severed half the drowner's arm.
No wonder Geralt used the Igni Sign to dry out their slime before dealing with drowners.
The drowner leaped aside with a miserable howl, and its companion behind it immediately took its place. Chen Xu reversed his downward cut into an upward slash, barely slicing open its belly.
Fortunately, [Saber Technique] could also be applied to a sword!
The drowner stuffed the exposed length of intestine back inside, secreted slime to seal the wound, and charged again with a howl.
Cleave! Parry! Slice! Slash! The saber was the boldest of all weapons. With the support of his seven points in Reaction and [Dodge], Chen Xu charged into and out of the drowners three times.
Had his opponents been ordinary humans, he would already have beaten them into disarray, but the drowners all but ignored pain, each fighting fearlessly.
Unable to land a fatal blow and suffering more and more wounds, Chen Xu had no choice but to put the one free attribute point he had intended to save into Strength.
His explosive power surged, and even his dodges and evasive movements became much faster.
Although their physical capabilities were now almost equal, the drowners held out until Chen Xu had nearly exhausted his stamina before all of them finally lay on the ground, howling.
As he finished them off one by one, he discovered that one drowner had only half its left leg remaining. All its other limbs had been cut away.
Its torso had been sliced up like raw fish, yet its agonized howls were still full of vigor.
"You really do cling to life."
Only when the silver sword pierced its skull did its suffering finally end.
[You have killed a Mortal Tier Lower Stage drowner. Experience +5 (stage suppression, experience reduced by 50%)]
After leveling up, Chen Xu's total level had reached Lv.4, automatically advancing him to the Mortal Tier Middle Stage and giving him stage suppression over the drowners.
Despite that advantage, he had still been beaten into such a sorry state. He could only blame [Detective] for not being a combat class.
Chen Xu thought of Geralt, the strongest individual combatant he had encountered so far. Geralt's class followed a continuous lineage, nothing a self-taught latecomer like him could compare with.
The six drowners provided a total of forty-five experience points. One had been at the same stage as him, so there had been no experience penalty.
His experience bar had now been emptied, so it was better than nothing.
He currently needed at least 250 experience points to gain a level. Killing drowners was far less efficient than completing quests.
He dived back to the riverbed and retrieved the lost money pouch. There was no telling where the current had carried the roll of silk.
The pouch held a whole handful of gold, but unfortunately, they were orens, the official currency of the fallen kingdom of Temeria.
These thirty-three gold coins would have to be exchanged for crowns in Novigrad before he could readily spend them. The exchange rate was one to one.
During the war, almost the entire continent accepted only gold crowns.
As he walked back, he carefully examined the fine sword in his hand. It was four chi and three cun long and weighed around 2.8 jin. Chen Xu instantly estimated its length and weight.
Its center of gravity lay far from the hilt. This balance was ideal for cleaving and suited to dealing with larger creatures.
He activated [Detection]:
-------- Item: One-handed sword · Silver sword · Moonblade Quality: Fine Attack: 16 (sharp) (ignores 10 Constitution against those vulnerable to silver) Durability: 28/28 A replica of the rare weapon [Moon Blade]. Its fine balance allows for precise, elegant cleaving strikes. Sapphire-dust circuits hidden within the hilt can draw away every bit of heat beneath the blade. The swordsmith must have carefully run their hands over the original. Selling price: 42 points Can be taken out of this world after grid conversion. --------
Of the three rune slots, two sat opposite each other on either side of the rapier-like crossguard, while one was hollowed into the end of the hilt.
Beautiful energy patterns extended from the hilt to the tip. The sword looked as much like a killing weapon for war as a duelist's blade.
But finely crafted silver swords were usually forged by witchers, so he surmised that this was another weapon commissioned by a Temerian noble who admired them.
The main reason the witchers' reputation had soured was that they had killed too many monsters.
Ordinary people had already forgotten the dark times when monsters ruled. Combined with the witchers' widespread lack of emotion, their insistence on payment, and other issues-including the Cult of the Eternal Fire's current smearing of nonhuman races and groups-they had gradually fallen out of favor.