Lynn used the remaining bread to mop up the meat sauce on his plate.
The village elder's daughter handed him a slightly damp cloth.
Lynn thanked her and wiped his hands with it.
Across from him, Geralt had also finished eating and drinking his fill.
He exchanged a glance with Lynn, then gave him an encouraging look, signaling for Lynn to speak with the elder.
Lynn weighed his words before speaking.
"Thank you for your hospitality. If you don't mind, let's get down to business now. I hear you've been threatened by a monster."
The village elder's expression immediately turned troubled.
"Yes, that's right, Master Witcher. You see, ours is a peaceful village. We've hardly ever had any outsiders visit, apart from the tax collector."
"But not long ago, a monster came to our cemetery and killed the caretaker. It's stayed there ever since and refuses to leave."
Lynn nodded. "What kind of monster, exactly?"
The elder spoke in a local dialect.
"People have been calling it all sorts of things. The villagers spout nonsense about a Mutant Arachas or a Manticore. I think it's all rubbish."
"We asked the noble lord who rules our village for help, but we never even got to see him. His guards sent us packing with, 'That's your problem. Wipe your own arses.'"
Lynn was puzzled. "Hasn't anyone seen the monster with their own eyes? Even from a distance?"
"Of course they have, and from very close, too. Some ended up dead, others injured."
The village elder sighed. "I knew all along that ordinary people couldn't handle that monster, but Gwen wouldn't listen. He insisted on getting a group of young men together to go to the cemetery. In the end... only Gwen and Roy came back alive."
"All right. Please bring both survivors here. We need to ask them some questions in person."
Lynn's request was soon fulfilled.
Two dejected young men entered the room and sat down in front of Lynn.
"Your village elder told us a monster appeared in your cemetery. Did you see what it looked like?"
The young man named Gwen said dispiritedly, "It was very dark at the time. Roy thought he saw something..."
Before Gwen could finish, Roy angrily interrupted him.
"I did see it! That monster looked like an old woman with parts of her body missing. Its claws were especially sharp. Smith and his pitchfork were both split open with a single swipe."
A cemetery, an old woman, sharp claws...
The image of a monster surfaced in Lynn's mind.
He could more or less guess what they would be facing.
"And then?" he asked thoughtfully.
Roy swallowed hard, as though recalling something terrifying.
"I was standing right beside Smith. Blood splattered all over my face, and I heard Sanji and Troy shouting."
"I was terrified. I wasn't thinking about anything else. I just didn't want to die like that. I'd never even touched a woman's hand. Dying like that would've been such a waste."
Lynn nodded and reassured him. "That's understandable."
Expecting a few villagers who had never received any combat training to fight a monster to the death without retreating really was asking too much.
Besides, even if they hadn't backed out, the only result would have been a few more corpses.
That monster... if this villager's information was accurate, even several fully armored soldiers carrying silver weapons might not have left the cemetery alive.
Lynn turned to Gwen beside him.
"What about you? Did you see nothing at all?"
Before Gwen could speak, Roy answered for him with a look of contempt.
"Him? He was the one who organized us to go kill the monster in the first place, but when that beast jumped out, he was also the first to run. What could he have seen?"
Gwen's face instantly flushed red.
He glared fiercely at Roy.
For a moment, Lynn thought Gwen would explode.
But in the end, he held himself back.
He simply stood in silence and strode out.
The wooden door slammed hard against its frame behind him.
Roy was unconcerned. "It's fine. Let that coward go. He knows less than I do anyway. Whatever you want to know, Master, just ask me."
Lynn drew his gaze back from the doorway and nodded.
"Can you remember any other details?"
"Details... oh, right, there was one other thing. We went to the cemetery in the afternoon, but we didn't find any trace of the monster. It only jumped out when it was almost dark."
Seeing that there was nothing more to learn, Lynn stood as well.
"All right. We've learned everything we need to know."
Roy said earnestly, "I hope you can slaughter that beast and avenge my friends."
After Roy left, the village elder returned to the room and looked at the two of them, his face full of worry and unease.
"Master Witchers, are you confident you can get rid of that monster?"
Lynn smiled. "Please give us some time to discuss it."
"Of course, of course."
The village elder nodded hastily.
He even remembered to close the door behind him as he left.
Only when the two of them were alone in the room did Geralt, who had remained silent all this time, finally speak.
"It seems you've already figured something out, haven't you?"
Lynn rested a finger against his chin and considered.
"There are several kinds of monsters that haunt cemeteries: Ghouls, Rotfiends, Devourers, Grave Hags..."
"But there's only one possibility that matches the old woman Roy described:"
"-a Grave Hag."
Grave Hags looked like old women with incomplete, hunched, malformed bodies.
They often prowled around the edges of cemeteries and battlefields.
They knew both places held their favorite food.
Grave Hags fed on human corpses.
They were particularly fond of human bone marrow.
They used their long, supple tongues to suck it out of the bones.
Like other kinds of necrophages, Grave Hags also attacked the living.
Because they preferred rotten corpses, they did not eat humans immediately after killing them. Instead, they buried the bodies in cemeteries and waited for them to rot.
Grave Hags were also highly territorial.
Their lairs looked like imitations of human dwellings and were usually built near cemeteries.
If they had run out of food, they would leave their lairs at night to hunt.
Their targets were lone travelers or grieving relatives too distraught to notice that the sun had set.
Only in rare cases would excessively hungry Grave Hags go out hunting during the day.
But since exposure to sunlight greatly weakened Grave Hags, they should be hunted in daylight whenever possible.