Isolated and without aid

With the Idr Giant Centipede dealt with and the air-element Place of Power absorbed, they could call this mission a fruitful one.

After sitting down to rest for a while in the elven ruins, Witt and Geralt prepared to head back the way they had come.

Just then, Witt suddenly remembered something and said, "Geralt, didn't you say that Idr Giant Centipede came underground through a portal? Should we look for it?"

After a moment's thought, Geralt nodded. "Yes, we should. Leaving a potential threat down here isn't how the School of the Wolf does things. What if another giant centipede crawls out of it someday? We might as well take a look."

Having agreed, the two began searching the elven ruins.

Witt soon followed the Idr Giant Centipede's old tracks on the ground to the portal, inside an elven building that had yet to collapse.

"Geralt! Over here!" Witt called outside.

"Don't go exploring in there yet! Wait for me!" Geralt immediately shouted back, afraid his brother's excessive curiosity would send him recklessly into an unknown place.

When Geralt arrived and saw Witt obediently standing where he was, he felt relieved.

"Geralt, don't treat me like a child. I know where I can and can't go," Witt said with a hint of complaint.

"Really?" Geralt raised an eyebrow, smiling at the eighteen-year-old before him. "Then who impulsively agreed to Lambert's proposal and took on a contract before he'd even finished his training?"

"Uh..." Witt was at a loss for words.

Witt went behind Geralt and pushed him toward the doorway, saying as they went, "Go, go, go. Get moving. You go first!"

"You've still got plenty to learn, boy! Heh!" Geralt planted both hands on his hips and laughed smugly.

The two went through the doorway one after the other, and their wolf's-head medallions began vibrating again.

It was an exquisite elven archway, its frame carved with intricate runic reliefs. Within it was a constantly spinning vortex like a black hole.

Witt sensed the runes carved into the frame constantly absorbing the magic around the ruins, keeping the portal active.

Within the vortex was an empty blackness. They could see nothing inside it, nor hear any sound.

Geralt frowned. He had always hated magic, especially teleportation magic.

"Should we destroy it? The runes on the frame absorb magic, so breaking them should shut the portal down for good," Witt said with a trace of regret.

Geralt did not answer Witt. He crouched to examine the marks on the ground. Two regular rows of round impressions extended side by side from inside the portal. It seemed the Idr Giant Centipede really had been transported here through it.

Although Geralt did not treasure these dilapidated ruins as the elves did, he was still reluctant to destroy with his own hands a portal that could rightly be called an artifact.

"We'd better..." Still, to avoid leaving a potential threat behind, Geralt made his decision and turned to find a stone to smash the runes on the frame.

"Wait. Let me take a look." Witt, who had been studying the portal all this time, stopped him.

Although Witt knew only some introductory magic, he could more or less make out what the runes carved into the frame represented.

He noticed that the energy-absorbing runes were primarily air-element runes, and that these air-element runes seemed to be arranged in an orderly pattern.

Following this discovery, Witt placed his left hand against an air-element rune on the frame and closed his eyes, sensing the feedback the elemental power gave him.

Everything before Witt's eyes was pitch-black, but a breeze brushed past his ear, conveying some kind of message, one he could understand but could not put into words.

He "saw" the flow of the wind.

Witt took his left hand off the frame and traced the wind's path through the air with his finger. Following its direction, Geralt moved aside a pile of fallen rubble by the nearby wall and found the mechanism behind it.

A pure-white, intact magic crystal lay quietly on the mechanism.

Geralt removed the magic crystal, shutting down the portal, and Witt opened his eyes.

"How did you do that?" Geralt asked in surprise.

"The wind told me."

With the portal shut down, there was nothing more to do here, so the two headed back the way they had come.

Of course, they took the pure-white magic crystal with them. After all, it counted as "unclaimed property" here.

Aboveground, the city guard, who had quietly surrounded the dump, finally attracted the commoners' attention. Although the soldiers had arrested almost all the residents living beside the dump and the commoners who had come to watch, one little "fish" had still slipped through their net.

Billy, that fish, had lived in the slums of Ard Carraigh since birth. From a very young age, he had aspired to join the Iron Rat Gang-not to throw his weight around and oppress commoners like the city guard, but to use his own two fists to become a hundred-win champion whose banner hung high in the Iron Rat House, in memory of his dead brother.

Taking a familiar route through the tunnels, he ran into the hall of the Iron Rat House and found "Giant Rat" Brody discussing matters with Carlson.

"B-Boss... hah... hah..." The long run had left Billy struggling for breath.

Hearing Billy call him "Boss," Brody frowned and scolded him. "Didn't I tell you not to call me that? I won't let you join the Iron Rat Gang. I promised your brother I'd take care of you."

Brody, who had built the foundations of the Iron Rat Gang with his own two fists, was the Iron Rat House's first hundred-win champion. He knew all too well how much hardship and pain it involved, beyond what ordinary people could imagine.

"N-no... Boss!" Billy took the water Carlson offered and gulped it down. After composing himself, he blurted out everything he had seen.

"The city guard surrounded the dump to the south-the one where I saw that giant centipede!"

Brody and Carlson were startled, then exchanged a look.

Brody hurriedly asked, "When did they get there? Why am I only hearing about this now?!"

"The city guard surrounded it ages ago. They even arrested Uncle Paulie when he was watching nearby! If he hadn't hidden me in an unfinished tunnel, the city guard would've caught me too!"

"So those tremors really did catch those bastards' attention. Damn it, couldn't those witchers have shown a little restraint?!" Carlson cursed.

It was precisely the loud explosion that had brought Carlson to Brody. He wanted to make preparations early, but he had not expected the city guard to react so quickly.

"It seems the witchers have alerted people even higher up," Brody said.

"What should we do? I'm afraid we can hardly..." Carlson asked, but his indifferent gaze had already made his position clear.

Brody frowned. He understood that he was no longer the hot-blooded boxer he had once been. He had to shoulder everything that came with the Iron Rat Gang. "We can't contend with the city guard when they're out in full force. We were only able to hold our own against them before because of our advantage in the city's complex tunnels, and because the nobles above were reluctant to provoke unrest among the poor."

Then he sighed. "The Iron Rat House is freedom, but it's also a prison."

Understanding the decision Brody had made, Carlson nodded.

Billy stared at them in disbelief. In his imagination, Brody should have rallied every member of the Iron Rat Gang with a wave of his arm to fight the vile city guard, just as he had every time before.

"Are we... really not going to do anything?"

Carlson shook his head. "There's nothing we can do. Our tunnels don't reach the southern dump yet. Without a way to advance and retreat freely, the Iron Rat Gang is nothing in the city guard's eyes."

Looking at the silent Brody, Billy burst into tears. He did not know what witchers were. He only knew that the city guard had come into the Iron Rat Gang's territory and bullied the residents, yet the Iron Rat Gang, who usually protected them, did not want to do anything. The hero in his heart should not be like this! He would go save Uncle Paulie and the others himself!

With that thought, Billy started to head outside.

"Keep watch over him!" Brody barked. The men beside him seized the struggling Billy and took him out of the hall.

After pondering for a moment, Brody ordered, "Immediately return the payment the witchers asked for, along with everything they left with us as collateral, to Laud. Get him out of the city through the tunnels as quickly as possible."

"Yes."

Carlson turned to leave, but after a few steps, he heard another sigh behind him.