"Lowell, my boy. Tell me, what exactly happened? Or did you leave out some detail?" Old Graz bent down and spoke gently.
Being stared at by three people was deeply uncomfortable, especially when one was a veteran mage and the other two were witchers.
"I... I..." Lowell muttered, clutching his head as he slumped on the ground, squeezing his eyes shut and struggling to remember.
Seeing Lowell like this, Old Graz was reluctant to pressure the honest student who had studied under him for so long. He had even arranged Lowell's job as White Mist Village's herbalist because he could not bear to see others bullying him at the academy.
Despite the Ban Ard Academy of Magic's poor reputation, students who had studied there were more than qualified to work as village herbalists.
"I remember! I remember!" Lowell jumped up excitedly.
"Lowell, tell us!" Old Graz said.
"That... that griffin was looking for that thing! It must have been!" Lowell scrambled outside on all fours.
Witt and the other two promptly followed him.
They saw Lowell on the hillside behind the house, digging furiously at something with a shovel.
By the time the three approached, Lowell was sitting on the ground, utterly exhausted. Beside him, he had dug a hole about half a meter deep.
Witt looked down into the hole. Something resembling a white pottery shard lay quietly at the bottom, giving off a strong stench of rotten eggs.
"This is... a griffin egg." Old Graz recognized it.
"That's right." Geralt nodded.
"That explains it. That's why the griffin was so frenzied."
Lowell looked at the others before him and asked repeatedly, "What? This is a griffin egg?"
"The reason griffins are often considered noble and loyal is that they have only one mate their entire lives, and they lay only one or two eggs each time they breed. So if their mate or offspring is attacked, they take frenzied revenge and won't stop until they die," Witt explained to Lowell.
"The question now is why a griffin egg appeared in the village. I doubt any griffin would be stupid enough to lay its eggs in a village instead of its nest," Geralt asked Lowell.
"Where did you find it?" Old Graz asked. He did not believe his student was the sort of fool who would bring something he knew nothing about back to the village.
Lowell hastily waved his hands and explained, "I didn't bring it into the village. That day, the day the griffin attacked the village, I was hiding in a farmer's backyard and stumbled across it! I wanted to find a chance to ask you what it was, Teacher, but its stench spread in no time, so I had no choice but to bury it."
"Did you only see one griffin?" Geralt asked.
"Only one."
"Whose backyard did you find the egg in?" Witt asked.
"Over there." Lowell stood up and pointed at a house near the center of the village.
The two witchers peered into the distance and could make out which house it was.
But it was getting late, so to avoid causing unnecessary trouble, Witt and Geralt decided to ask about it the next morning.
A mixed-grain stew simmered on the stove, and Witt, Geralt, and Old Graz sat beside it to warm themselves.
Meanwhile, Lowell, the only ordinary person among the four, had been sent to the village inn by his teacher to buy wine.
"Old Graz, do you really know this student of yours?" Witt asked after finishing a bowl of stew.
Old Graz had no appetite at all just then. He did not answer, merely puffing hard on his pipe and repeatedly glancing out the window.
Witt ladled himself another bowl of soup and said, "I'm not trying to cast suspicion on Lowell, Mr. Graz, but ordinary villagers couldn't possibly have seen a monster like a griffin, let alone climbed sheer cliffs to steal griffin eggs."
Old Graz exhaled a thick cloud of smoke and shook his head firmly. "Lowell couldn't have done it. He has no reason to. He's been the herbalist in White Mist Village for over ten years, and before that, he spent more than ten years as my apprentice. You could say I watched the boy grow up. Otherwise, I wouldn't have personally arranged a future for him."
Geralt nodded. His many encounters with the old mage over the years made him willing to trust him. After all, the matter had yet to be fully investigated, and he did not want to slander a good man who was already pitiful enough.
"You could say Lowell was the most studious boy in his year at Ban Ard Academy. He was even more diligent than many of the children with magical talent. Even after I discovered he had little talent for magic, I still taught him alchemy and medicine for several years, so that he would have a trade once he left the academy and wouldn't starve to death..."
"Let's investigate first," Witt said. "A witcher's duty is to deal with monsters and the dangers they leave behind. If there really is something else behind this, we can leave it to Mr. Graz."
Witt was not deliberately singling him out. Rather, from the moment Lowell stepped through the door, the faint fluctuations in the flame rune on his arm had never stopped.
Only after Lowell left did the rune's fluctuations subside.
But according to Old Graz, Lowell had no magical talent. Such an abnormal situation left Witt no choice but to stay alert.
Geralt nodded in agreement. "That's right, Witt. All we witchers need to do is hunt monsters and complete our contracts."
As they spoke, footsteps sounded outside the door, and all three immediately dropped the subject.
"Teacher, master witchers, I'm back." Lowell carried not only the wine he had just bought, but also an unexpected fresh ham.
After dinner, the two "old men" retired to Lowell's own room and the ward prepared for patients respectively, while the two younger men had to make do with blankets spread on the floor, staying close to the stove for warmth through the night.
"Witt, I heard you witchers can use magic even without magical talent. Is that true?" Lowell asked, sitting by the wall. His eyes gazed through the window at the night sky, and there was a hint of envy in his voice.
"It's less magic and more a trick." Leaning against the wall opposite him, Witt snapped his fingers, and a tiny flame appeared at his fingertip.
Disappointment showed in Lowell's eyes, and he sighed. "Is magic really that far out of reach?"
"Why do you want to have magic?" Witt asked.
"Why?" Lowell froze. The discrimination he had suffered at the academy over a decade ago, along with his years of practicing medicine in White Mist Village, had made him somewhat forget why he had wanted to master magic in the first place.
"I don't know. Maybe I just want to have it." Lowell shook his head. He had remembered the reason, but at that moment, he could not bring himself to say it.
Witt blew out the flame in his hand, hiding his face in the darkness again, though his eyes remained fixed on Lowell.
He said slowly, "The price of mastering this sort of 'trick' begins with eight long years of dietary restrictions and training, during which you can drink only potions made from herbs and mushrooms. Then comes a mutation process with a death rate as high as seventy percent. If you're lucky enough, the mutations will merely alter your entire physiology, and pain is only the least of their side effects..."
"...In the end, what do you get? A life of wandering year-round, endless battles with monsters, and magic that barely amounts to a parlor trick."
"...This isn't a blessing. It's a curse."
Lowell said nothing, merely adding more wood to the stove.
"Mr. Graz arranged for you to come here. He probably hoped you could have a good life, too. Why not try finding someone?" Witt tried to ease the mood.
"You're wrong, Master Witt. Nobody wants to marry a dropout from Ban Ard Academy. They're either spies or scoundrels." Lowell clenched his fists.
And that was indeed the case. Compared with the Aretuza Academy of Magic, which emphasized teaching and specialized in training sorceresses, Ban Ard Academy was better described as the cradle of spies for the Northern Kingdoms.