Lynn turned to the last page of the manuscript.
Only after making sure there was nothing on the back did he hand it to Geralt.
While Geralt read the manuscript, it was Lynn's turn to stand guard.
A few minutes later, Geralt finally finished reading the entire manuscript and frowned.
"897? That was over three hundred years ago."
"No wonder Brovar didn't know a great plague had broken out in Mahakam. It looks like Grand Elder Otto, his predecessor, destroyed all the records related to it."
Lynn couldn't help marveling, either.
The mages of this world were powerful.
Alzur, Raffard... they were all legendary mages who could subdue an entire kingdom with their own immense power.
For instance, the Prince of Maribor and the Prince of Ellander had once fought a protracted war over the throne of Temeria.
The war had spanned generations, continuing all the way into the eleventh century.
It had brought the people endless suffering.
Precisely because the war had dragged on with seemingly no end in sight, it had also been called the Endless War.
Alzur had tried to persuade the Prince of Ellander to surrender the throne to its rightful heir, the Prince of Maribor.
But the Prince of Ellander, relying on his vast army, had refused.
Left with no choice, Alzur had summoned the enormous Viy onto the battlefield of the decisive clash between the two armies, sweeping away the Prince of Ellander's forces.
Only then had the Prince of Ellander surrendered, finally bringing the protracted war to an end.
Yet at the same time, the mages of this world were weak.
Because that glittering age of luminaries, when Alzur and Raffard had been active, had already passed.
Now was the twilight of the gods, an age of declining magic.
Even the most powerful mages of this era could not reach the heights Alzur once had.
Who could have imagined that dimeritium, which had been no different from the Turtle Stone before Alzur, would actually become the bane of mages?
People always imagined that the times ought to march ever forward.
Yet the reality was...
Geralt folded the manuscript and carefully put it away.
"Judging by the manuscript, we have no more than a day in this abandoned mine. A 'disease' that can infect a sorceress could probably bypass our witcher immune systems, too."
"Let's go. Let's put an end to all this as soon as possible."
There was a wooden door at the end of the camp.
Lynn pushed it open.
The door wasn't locked.
It opened with just a gentle push.
Hollow darkness unfolded before his eyes.
An even more bone-chilling draft blew out from the depths of the mine tunnel.
As Lynn walked through the tunnel, he couldn't help feeling an illusion come over him.
It was as though they weren't walking through a mine tunnel in Mahakam, but through the gullet of some enormous monster.
As they ventured deeper into the tunnel, traces of excavation gradually grew scarcer.
The remaining traces had clearly been left three centuries ago.
Now, worn away by the river of time, they had become utterly dilapidated.
But sounds of screaming and scratching came from behind a sealed brick wall.
"Someone's still alive?"
Lynn blasted the sealed brick wall open with an Aard Sign from his palm.
Behind the collapsing wall, there was nothing.
Only white bones littered the ground.
Many phenomena in the witcher world couldn't be explained by science, or even by magic.
Geralt crouched on the ground and examined the scene with his Witcher Senses.
He soon reached a conclusion.
"Bones, blood, dried mucus... they must be victims infected hundreds of years ago."
"They were all sealed behind this wall. Looks like Brovar's predecessor was far more hard-hearted than he is."
At least Brovar had only gathered the sick together to quarantine them.
Brovar's predecessor, on the other hand, had simply sealed the patients inside the mine.
"Let's hope they were already dead when they were abandoned here."
Lynn hoped that was the case.
But the cruel reality before his eyes was this:
The wall was covered in marks, undoubtedly gouged out by the patients' fingernails.
They had still been alive when they were sealed in here.
And right up until their deaths, they had tried to escape.
Just then, a piercing screech suddenly rang out from deep in the tunnel at the other end.
"Gwah... goo-goo... woo..."
Amid a series of strange, incomprehensible cries, a deformed figure emerged from the far end of the tunnel.
Before either of them could get a clear look at the figure, the thing swept toward them like a gust of wind, lunging viciously at them.
Without thinking, Lynn raised his arm.
The blast of air from the Aard Sign sent even the dust on the ground flying high.
The charging, deformed figure was hurled backward at tremendous speed and slammed into the tunnel wall with the sound of bones being smashed to pieces.
Then Geralt appeared beside the figure like a phantom.
Cold steel flashed.
The silver sword sliced off its head.
Only then did the thing stop struggling.
Lynn walked over, crouched down, and carefully examined the attacker's true appearance.
"Not a human, but a dwarf... judging by his rotting clothes, he was a dwarven miner from hundreds of years ago."
"But the strange thing is, hundreds of years should have been enough to turn his corpse to bones, yet he was still up and running around."
Geralt put away his silver sword, took out a small hunting knife, and deftly slit open the attacker's belly.
"Most of his organs were already badly damaged, and there are symptoms of hemorrhagic fever..."
"This is probably one of the patients the manuscript mentioned attacking the Order of Benevolent Apothecaries."
"Looks like anyone possessed by a Red Miasmal ends up like this, neither human nor ghost. No wonder she warned anyone who came after her never to stay in the mine too long."
The two continued deeper into the mine.
This time, they hadn't gone far before Lynn faintly heard a voice coming from ahead.
He exchanged a glance with Geralt, and they lightened their footsteps, slowly drawing closer.
Then, in a somewhat open cavern not far ahead, they discovered a figure busily at work.
She wasn't a dwarf, but a human, petite and frail, and still wore a blue physician's robe-though it had become tattered with age.
Her back was turned to them, and she was muttering to herself.
"Don't call the leader yet. I have potions, suturing tools... I know I can do it..."
On an equally decayed table in front of her lay the corpse of an Aberration.
Perhaps because all her attention was focused on the Aberration's corpse, she didn't notice the two approaching from behind at all.
Geralt looked at Lynn.
He questioned Lynn with his eyes.
Even a member of a long-lived race couldn't survive three centuries in an abandoned mine without food or water.
All Lynn had to do was nod, and Geralt could cut off the head of this being, whether human or ghost, with lightning speed.
But Lynn shook his head slightly.
Then he spoke up, revealing his presence.
"Hello."
The female physician jumped in fright.
She hurriedly turned around.
Only when she turned did Lynn see that the upper half of her face was tightly wrapped in several layers of bandages.
The skin exposed outside the bandages showed clear signs of decay.
And a scalpel was embedded deep in her throat.
This closely resembled someone's fate in the manuscript Casti had left behind.
Yet in contrast to her frightening appearance, the female physician's voice sounded very soft and gentle.