—
Chuckling as he saw his mother looking at him with mock fury, as if a sandal might have become a deadly projectile had one been within reach, Gustave fled before her ire could catch up to him. Entering the teleportation hub, he made his way to the Rivia Magic Academy, where he spotted Larkin and Vivienne de Tabris sitting by the fountain, waiting for him.
Walking over to them, Gustave greeted Vivienne by kissing the back of her hand, as Toussaintois tradition ordained to make a good impression after annoying her and her family by delaying the treatment. Breaking the kiss, he straightened and said, "My apologies, my lady, for the delay—and for the additional two hours. Something came up."
Seeing that she merely frowned in displeasure and nodded without saying anything, Gustave chuckled in embarrassment, knowing it was his fault for prioritizing his inventions over everything else. Realizing that he needed to be more attentive at times, especially after giving his word, he took the lesson to heart. He then turned to Larkin and asked,
"So, Larkin. Is everything ready?"
"Everything is ready, my lord. We can begin with Class 1-A."
Nodding, Gustave added, "And yes, don't forget to bring the Obsidian Mirror. I need to channel focused reflections to spot the curse."
"As you wish, my lord."
Turning to Vivienne, Gustave made a gentlemanly gesture and said, "My lady," before walking into the designated classroom that Larkin and the servants had already prepared.
Upon entering, he saw that the room had been chalked full of symbols and Glagolitic runes, already placed by the academy's mages without his needing to personally set up the usual general protections against curses and banned magic such as Goetia.
He nodded in approval, noting that their knowledge of ritual magic had advanced significantly, thanks to Cintran mages gathering grimoires and scrolls from hunting down rogue sorcerers and from repeated skirmishes with Nilfgaard over the past three years.
Coupled with the fact that witches from the Wildlands beyond the Blue Mountains had brought their knowledge of curse magic into these lands—knowledge that became easy loot after skirmishes with them—Gustave acknowledged that, when it came to magic, he trusted Cintra to gather and innovate effectively.
So, while considering that Cintra would handle the magical side while he intended the Twin Realms to focus on the scientific one, Gustave finally noticed Larkin bringing in the Obsidian Mirror with the help of several students.
To his surprise, among them were Felicia Cori and Nimu, Nimue's ancestor. The sight amused him, as it became clear that what he had done in passing two months ago had left a deep impression on them. They had even skipped their classes just to see him again after hearing the news that he intended to lift Vivienne's curse following his emergence from research seclusion.
They even had the gall to act surprised, trying to create a more natural and organic scene as if they had known nothing beforehand about him being present in this class.
"Your Highness!!! I-I am sorry, forgive me…"
Seeing that Felicia Cori was already fully in her element as a budding Enchantress, Gustave merely nodded to them in greeting and did not take the small manipulation to heart.
After six years of living in this world, especially three years spent observing its society up close, some of its scheming tendencies had inevitably rubbed off on him. Had this been his first arrival, the act might have annoyed or offended him, given that he came from a society where honesty was a central pillar of social function.
Here, however, where the baseline of moral ambiguity felt dialed higher than on Earth at roughly four out of ten, compared to Earth's two out of ten, such behavior was normal to them, and by now it had become normal to him as well.
"Felicia, Nimu."
Turning toward Vivienne, intent on lifting the curse, Gustave asked, "My lady, your hand, please."
Taking Vivienne's hand and guiding her in front of the Obsidian Mirror, Gustave then instructed Larkin, "Larkin, please light the Conjurer's Candle in our vicinity. A normal circle will be fine."
Stunned as she looked at the prince who had made her wait a full two months, Vivienne felt an inkling of what procedure Gustave intended to perform, as she had little else to do during that time but study her own curse at the academy.
Watching the youngest prince, rumored to be the most brilliant child in the world, begin to draw strange symbols along the edge of the Obsidian Mirror, Vivienne tried to pull her hand back. She did not want to risk transferring the curse to someone else, least of all to someone so dear to Queen Meve.
Yet, without warning, she found herself unable to speak or even move to free herself from his grip. A tingling surge of magic flowed from him into her hand and spread throughout her body. Unable to do anything but watch, she had no choice but to accept the treatment, one that even Arch-Master Alvin could perform with a willing subject.
"Together, let's stare back into the abyss of the mirror."
Unable to deny the suggestive pull of the spell, Vivienne stared into the Obsidian Mirror and saw her true self, a form covered in feathers, with a beak where her face should have been. Worse still, standing behind her in the reflection was another beaked monstrosity, its presence alone sending shivers through her as it gently raked its talons through her feathers.
But that was not all. Behind the creature responsible for her curse becoming so severe stood a beautiful nymph, whom she presumed to be its original form, before the nymph Leimoniad transformed into this Relict monster. Looking deeper into the mirror, that Relict form shifted once more, revealing a fleshy monstrosity devouring the head of a human infant.
Yet just as that final image flashed before her eyes, sending an unnatural tremor through her and driving her with the urge to smash her own head against the wall, Vivienne's senses snapped back to normal. In the next instant, she felt lighter once more.
Falling to the ground with her hand already free, Vivienne gasped for air before quickly removing the pendant at her neck, the one that had maintained the illusion of her original appearance. Seeing that her hand had truly returned to normal, she wanted to scream in joy, but stopped herself as the method Prince Gustave had used came back to her mind.
Turning her head to look at the prince, Vivienne shuddered when a monstrous heart suddenly appeared in his hand, still beating as if it had come from nowhere.
Yet less than a second later, a sensation brushed over her, like the passing presence of everything her logical mind could comprehend as holy, and then everything returned to normal. The beating heart was already gone from the prince's grasp, leaving her even more flabbergasted.
Rubbing her eyes, fully aware that what had occurred was no mere illusion, Vivienne found herself unable to ask anything. The prince simply spoke to her in a perfunctory manner and immediately went on his way, as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
"My lady, congratulations. Your treatment is over. You can enjoy being a normal human once more, without any complications. Go on adventures, attend balls, dance beneath the sky, or drink to the point of senselessness. It is up to you now. You are free. Well, considering that there are still matters to attend to, I will take my leave. It was nice meeting you, my lady."
With that, Gustave left the classroom, offering a passing smile to Felicia and Nimu before heading toward the teleportation hub. From there, the path led onward to New Kaer Morhen, located in Cintra, or more precisely, in the Armush Mountains near the Smallton villages.
While stepping into the teleportation hub, he could not help but dwell on the divinity, authority, Quintessence, or whatever name truly fit the Power he had quietly stolen from Yaga.
That Quintessence, once funneled through his own Rilutastic Magic back in the steampunk metropolis, had been turned into a marker. With it, he could be certain that the Twin Realms were now free from the influence of most witches, without relying on the Naiads at all.
Through this marker, he could send a forged message to any witch, a clear warning not to enter the Twin Realms, making it appear as though the command had come directly from Yaga herself. And unlike the Eternal Fire, whose flesh he had torn away in anger back then, this was Power he intended to manipulate quietly and use in any way he wished.
That was why, even though the Quintessence divinity now rested within his observatory, he knew it was not truly his. He had merely stolen it, slipping subtle malware deep into Yaga's domain, enough to grant him partial command over her worshippers for the benefit of the Twin Realms and himself.
For now, this madness, or Quintessence, was being automatically funneled and stored so that he could maintain it more easily and later turn it into tangible power, allowing him to advance as a Sequence 8 Archaeologist, perhaps by upgrading his [Knowledge] or [Recall] abilities to be more attuned to history.
—
[7th Madness Barrier: 18.]
[Acting Madness: 0.]
[Digested Madness: 0.]
[Embodied Madness: 0.]
[Maintained Madness: 9 + 6 (Temporary). (9 from Kreves and 6 from Yaga.)]
[Tangible Power: 3.]
—
And upon looking at the three zeros he had yet to bump up, Gustave merely chuckled in amusement, knowing that he did not care much about Sequence Power anymore. After all, he had realized that his true golden finger was the vast knowledge of modern science, spanning from Einstein to Nobel Prize–winning research up to 2025. Compared to that, he treated this Power as nothing more than a set of tools.
Tools that, if useful, he would use, and if not, he would simply set aside and use only when needed, since a tool's purpose was merely to empower him to invent something better.
And considering that Sequence 7 Appraiser and Sequence 6 Artisan were essentially redundant to him, given that he could already accomplish their feats without being at those sequences, aside from improved intelligence and computational ability, he treated these improvements as nothing more than a side project.
Coupled with the fact that there were concoctions such as the Vial of Forbidden Knowledge, which could improve his computational brainpower simply by drinking them and which were still in the hands of the Chapter, he also knew that once Calanthe got her hands on them, even the improved intelligence granted by Sequences would become redundant.
Even now, the [Knowledge] and [Recall] abilities were slowly being eroded and steadily integrated into his Elder Blood bloodline, becoming a true part of him and thus turning into Eyes of Knowledge, much like the innate magic of his colleagues from the House of Raven, rather than remaining mere Sequence Power that acted as borrowed innate magic.
But he knew that, out of gratitude for this tool and respect for it as the first mystical Power he had ever possessed, he would still treat this Sequence as his main framework to work with.
He would continue to add to it until the Sequence became unique to him and, later, to his minions as well, such as gaining the ability to manipulate mist or alter the gravity of small gears and bolts, things that did not exist in the original Sequence.
Not only would this turn the redundant Sequence 7 and 6 into something far more useful, granting a new set of mystical Powers that would help him become a better mechanist inventor, but it would also free him from the original path, which followed a fixed trajectory that required higher Sequences merely to create magical contraptions.
Thinking about the original Sequence and its characteristic of receiving madness in the form of jumbled knowledge, like a curse from a higher being, Gustave remembered and understood why Vivienne's curse was unable to increase his Maintained Madness, forcing him to steal directly from Yaga herself before there was even a hint of Quintessence he could use.
This was especially true considering that he had already evolved into a higher-level being. If his existence were treated as an infinite scale, then his Sequence 9 would be like the natural numbers, while his Sequence 8 would be like the integers, operating on an entirely different level, much like how integers include negative numbers while natural numbers do not.
That was why he accepted that certain lower-quality curses or jumbled Quintessence of information were no longer useful to him. Unable to dwell on that thought any longer, as he had already arrived, he turned his attention to his surroundings, taking in the sight of a place that was essentially a carbon copy of Kaer Morhen.
Arriving at New Kaer Morhen and walking through its grounds in search of the original Wolf Witcher, he found that the fortress was completely brand new, with even the faint scent of river stone still lingering on its walls.
Not only that, many Cintrian Spellweavers and Enchanters roamed its halls alongside the normal guards, preventing the place from feeling like the ghost fortress it had been in the original Kaer Morhen, when only Vesemir had operated it. To such an extent, even sorcerers from the south—from Geso, North Metinna, Nazair, and Mag Turga—were present.
He knew they were there to continue research on Witchers and to begin new studies on the Dawnwalker, driven by a shared hunch that the world would no longer remain peaceful and might soon resemble the age when the Chapter was first founded.
Judging from the many signs appearing across the world, from monsters and witches to the gods themselves, with the Twin Realms standing as the prime example, he, like them, felt that this conclusion was becoming increasingly obvious.
It created a scene reminiscent of the founding of the Order of Witchers, when sorcerers had gathered in large numbers to solve the monster problem after receiving Azlur's prototype for creating Witchers.
Azlur, who had not merely created Witchers themselves, but the entire system surrounding them, their armor, silver enchanted swords, Mutagenerators, Signs, medallions, knowledge of curses, and countless other elements that defined what it meant to be a Witcher, because that was what inventors or scientists did.
Finding them in the kitchen, Gustave couldn't help but take in the scene before him.
Ciri looked crestfallen, like a kitten whose tail had been stepped on. Cerys sat awkwardly under the direct onslaught of the tirade, and his brother Anséis also sat awkwardly, staring at the floor as if it had suddenly become fascinating.
Yennefer rebuked Ciri for falling for such obvious tricks. Geralt sat off to the side, staring at the ceiling just like his brother, while Vesemir repeatedly shook his head, looking at Ciri as though all prior teachings about waiting for the right opportunity as a hunter had been thrown out the window.
Lambert chuckled in amusement while watching Ciri, Eskel drank continuously in an attempt to forget everything that had happened in Kerack, and the many others who had become part of Ciri's entourage filled the room. Gustave finally arrived and offered a simple greeting.
"Yo."
—