Geralt left all the same, with a casual wave and nothing else.
Especially after confirming that even if Vergen lost the battle, Victor had no intention of dying with the city alongside Angoulême, he departed without the slightest hesitation.
Vernon Roche of the Blue Stripes and Ves also embraced the young witcher in farewell.
Victor watched them leave.
With the faint light of dawn before him, Victor headed south. However, with Henselt's entire army mobilized, the young man had no choice but to make a tactical detour, taking a much longer route to avoid Kaedwen's main formations.
...
When he entered the quarry valley northeast of Vergen, unnaturally dense storm clouds suddenly gathered overhead, and a fine, steady rain began to fall, soaking him from head to toe.
Then he saw the bodies of his troll friends.
The male troll with antler decorations and the female troll adorned with a goat skull had clearly fought desperately, but in the end, they had been overwhelmed by superior numbers.
Their killers were probably professional mercenaries. Several distinct kinds of weapon wounds could be identified on the corpses. Regular soldiers would not have left such a complicated assortment of injuries.
A professional mercenary company had recently passed through the ravine.
After reaching this careful conclusion, Victor spent some time harvesting the livers of his friends, then cremated the troll couple.
Waste was a terrible thing, after all. Troll liver was an essential ingredient in several advanced blade oils.
...
The rain kept falling, and the mood was far from pleasant.
Victor followed the traces left behind by the mercenary company. They were clearly unfamiliar with the terrain, but they were nevertheless moving in the correct direction.
There was only one reason for them to appear here at this particular moment. They intended to use the secret passage and launch a surprise attack on Vergen through the mines behind the mountain.
"Brave gentlemen, we'll reach the city soon. We'll take them completely by surprise!"
"Shut your mouth and concentrate on leading the way, Evald de Aldersberg. You've already taken us in the wrong direction several times."
"Damn you, show some respect! I am still a nobleman. You can hardly expect me to know my way around filthy mines!"
"A nobleman driven out of Vergen and stripped of his lands. If you want your reward, you'd better remember that the king dislikes waiting!"
Not long after entering the mine, Victor finally heard voices coming from deeper within.
He immediately quickened his pace.
Unfortunately, there were clearly capable men among the enemy as well. The witcher soon noticed that they had stopped moving and were lying in ambush, waiting for him.
Fortunately, this was a cave.
A narrow cave.
So Victor strode fearlessly into the spacious stone chamber and allowed more than fifty men carrying torches and weapons to surround him.
This mercenary company was clearly wealthy. Their equipment was complete and their armor well maintained. Their leader was a bald man with a golden beard.
Amid the blazing torchlight, he stared into Victor's eyes.
"A witcher!? Sir, what are you doing here? Allow me to remind you that we're very close to a battlefield. You should be extremely careful about what you say."
Although his tone was interrogative, Victor was genuinely surprised by how friendly the man was toward a witcher.
He had actually called him "sir" and was willing to ask why he was here.
So Victor told him the truth.
"I'm going to Vergen to find my friends. Too many Kaedwenis are blocking the front gate, so I had to use the back entrance."
The other man remained composed. The mercenary commander clearly had no desire to create unnecessary complications.
He frowned, his brown eyes flickering.
"Witcher, I strongly suggest that you leave. Now. Immediately."
"But I have a reason why I must get inside..."
At that moment, a nobleman Victor had previously seen at the round-table council stepped forward. It had to be Evald de Aldersberg.
He loudly slandered him.
"I've seen him before! This filthy witcher is Victor Corion, that whore Saskia's lover!"
Evald's accusation immediately intensified the atmosphere.
The alchemist remained perfectly calm, took out a vial of potion, and drained it.
Then he drew a deep breath.
...
"Fus Ro Dah!"
The Dragon Shout exploded through the cavern with enough force to rupture eardrums.
Victor immediately plunged into close combat.
Cutting down the staggering warriors was no more difficult than slaughtering pigs. No one before him could withstand his attacks.
The King's Guardian spun through a swift sword dance, while Dreadful King added devastating blunt-force impact to every strike as he tore through the mercenaries with overwhelming force.
The Dragon Shout was the source of Victor's absolute confidence in allowing himself to be surrounded.
This was a cavern.
No matter how wide the chamber might be, it was still a cavern.
What that female vampire had once done to witchers, Victor was now doing to these mercenaries.
A sword.
Such a fast sword.
Victor's sword.
In heaven or on earth, there was only one King's Guardian.
The sword flashed again.
Only once.
His hand moved, and the sword light soared.
No one could describe the brilliance or splendor of that strike, nor could anyone describe its speed.
It was no longer merely a sword.
It was the wrath of the thunder god, the strike of lightning itself.
The sword flashed.
Then vanished.
Victor passed a mercenary and continued onward, yet the man remained standing exactly where he was, motionless, his arms hanging at his sides and his face frozen stiff.
Before long, only one man remained standing.
Victor sliced Evald's throat open with the edge of his sword.
His expression was relaxed.
He offered kings only superficial respect to begin with, so he certainly did not give a damn about noble blood.
He reversed his blade to parry an attack, then struck down the mercenary captain when the wounded man forced himself to lunge forward.
Victor's bloodstained steel sword stopped with its point directly before the man's nose.
Pressing a hand against his wound to stop the bleeding, the honest-looking bald man lay on the ground, panting heavily.
"Incredible. I haven't forgotten how skilled you witchers are with swords, but I've never heard anything like that shout before... So what now? Are you going to kill me?"
"You gave me a chance to speak, so I'll give you one as well. You killed my troll friends and were preparing to launch a surprise attack on my dwarf friends. What do you think I should do?"
"What was I supposed to do? Your troll friends were trying to eat us! And as for your dwarf friends, I haven't even seen them yet... As for the fight between us, the outcome has already been decided."
Victor rubbed the stubble on his chin.
He suddenly realized the man had something of a point.
Slaughtering the mercenaries would certainly be easy, but they had already lost the ability to resist, and there was no reason to fill an excessive daily quota of killing.
"Sir, I always thought I was a hard man. But when I think about my wife... now... I beg you, have mercy. She's in Tretogor, waiting to give birth. I want to live long enough to see my child born.
"I once fought alongside Geralt of Rivia. Could you spare me for his sake? I'll abandon this contract completely, and I swear you'll never see me standing against you again."
Victor knew perfectly well that a desperate man might say anything while begging for his life, but this fellow had left a decent impression on him.
So he was willing to hear a little more.
"Be specific. Where did you meet Geralt?"
"My lord, I am Adam Pangratt, commander of the Free Company during the Battle of Brenna. My wife is Julia Abatemarco."
Someone else might not have recognized those names from the introduction, but Victor had read enough history to know exactly who they were.
"Whoa! You're the one who married Pretty Kitty? Congratulations. If it's her, then Adieu Pangratt, give her my regards."
Victor waved a hand, indicating that he was free to leave.
Adam had also been cut during the battle, but because he had spoken politely from the beginning, Victor had deliberately kept his wound shallow. A little bandaging would be enough for him to move.
However, the witcher's familiarity with his wife gave the mercenary captain a rather strange idea.
"Cough... cough. My lord, you know my wife!?"
Victor rolled his eyes.
"What, did you think I was about to tell you how great your wife is?
"No. I've never met her. I've only heard that she's beautiful, and I've read about how your men smashed the flank of the Black Ones during the Battle of Brenna."
The Black Ones were a common name for Nilfgaardian troops.
"...Those are nothing but empty honors. May I know your name, my lord?"
"Victor Corion, of the Phantom Troupe."
"So I'm standing before Lord Dovahkiin himself. No wonder... Our defeat was only natural. I swear I won't forget the mercy you've shown me. My employer ordered me to carry this gemstone. I'll give it to you now as proof of my sincerity."
Victor reached out and accepted the gemstone glowing with a lake-green light.
It was a peridot.
Under the light of the flames, Victor noticed engraved patterns within it.
This was actually a mage's mark.
And of all the mages operating in the surrounding area, there was only one fighting on Kaedwen's side.
Dethmold.
Victor closed his fingers around the peridot.
He had never expected his opportunity for revenge to arrive so suddenly.
His smile became extraordinarily sincere.
"I accept your sincerity. I'm guessing he'll teleport here before long. Go. Your employer and I happen to have an old account to settle."
...
For the time being, no one knew what had happened inside the mines behind the mountain.
Outside Vergen's main gate, however, another assault had been stopped by the walls. King Henselt needed time to reorganize his army, and the fighting briefly subsided.
Within Kaedwen's temporary encampment, Dethmold, wearing a red skullcap and luxurious robes, finished meditating.
Earlier, he had used a fireball to destroy the first gate, then summoned storm clouds and rain to reduce the effectiveness of the defenders' boiling oil.
Even with his considerable magical reserves, he still needed a short rest.
The intensity of the battle, however, did not allow him to relax for long.
Judging by the time, the contingency plan he had arranged earlier should now be ready.
At dawn, he had sent Evald de Aldersberg to lead Adam Pangratt's mercenary company through the mining passage behind Vergen and launch a surprise attack.
Now he could sense that the gemstone had stopped moving somewhere behind the mountain.
They had presumably reached their destination and were waiting for him to teleport over.
With more than fifty mercenaries attacking from within while Henselt's forces pressed from outside, breaking through the second gate should only be a matter of time.
Dethmold therefore sent a messenger to inform the king, then began chanting loudly and opened a portal toward the location of the mark.
...
Every torch had been extinguished.
In the middle of the pitch-black mine lay a single peridot.
Pale golden light shimmered.
The instant Dethmold stepped through the portal, he sensed something strange and immediately tensed.
He was standing inside a mine in absolute darkness.
There was no torchlight around him.
There were no mercenaries eagerly waiting to flatter him.
This was absolutely not how things were supposed to be.
A trap!?
Suddenly, the faint rush of something moving through the air sounded above his head.
Dethmold instinctively raised a magical shield.
An explosion thundered through the cavern.
The mage immediately felt his magic become sluggish.
He could not stop himself from shouting in shock.
"A Dimeritium Bomb!?"
His first thought was that remnants of the Order of the Flaming Rose were responsible.
After all, of all the other organizations possessing this technology, neither the Novigrad Guard nor the Koviri Royal Guard could possibly be here.
Still, something like this was not enough to defeat him.
Using the lingering light from the portal he had just opened, Dethmold blinked into the corner of the cavern, escaping the cloud of dimeritium dust.
"Who is it!? Who dares ambush me? Have you grown tired of living!?" he shouted.
At that exact moment, agony suddenly exploded through his kidney.
A dagger delivered the justice of a perfect backstab, piercing straight through Dethmold's lower abdomen.
Damn it!
The assassin had been waiting in this position from the very beginning.
He had predicted that Dethmold would dodge away from the dimeritium dust and blink straight here!
With no visibility in the darkness, the mage did not dare teleport over a long distance. Materializing inside the mountain wall would kill him instantly.
He could only blink back toward the center of the chamber, enduring the dimeritium dust's interference with his spellcasting as he widened the distance between himself and his attacker.
Pressing tightly against the bleeding wound, Dethmold roared, "Who are you!? You cowardly bastard hiding in the dark! You have the nerve to ambush me but not the courage to give me your name?"
The assassin ignored the mage's impotent fury and remained silent.
Instead, he abruptly hurled a dagger, interrupting Dethmold before he could cast a light spell.
The man attacking him from the darkness was, of course, Victor.
Using stealth techniques copied from witchers of the School of the Viper together with a Cat potion that granted him night vision, Victor had successfully inflicted a grievous wound upon the mage.
The dimeritium dust had also completely eliminated Dethmold's ability to open a portal and escape.
Victor's dagger-throwing technique had likewise been copied from Auckes and Serrit.
In a way, this was revenge delivered from beyond the grave.
Victor's original intention had been to let Dethmold die without ever learning who had killed him.
Unfortunately, the mage was no amateur.
Forcing himself to cast fireballs in every direction, Dethmold blasted the cavern wildly until he finally discovered the identity of his opponent.
"Victor! How can it be you?"
One of the fireballs ignited a fallen wooden support beam.
In the firelight, half of the young witcher's face was illuminated while the other remained buried in shadow.
Gone was Dethmold's usual composure and malicious sarcasm.
Clutching his abdomen, he shrieked through the pain.
"You... Do you have any idea what you're doing? I am Henselt's royal advisor! Do you intend to challenge the authority of Kaedwen?"
"What a boring threat... I don't give a fuck what Henselt thinks. You're going to die here anyway, and no one will ever know.
"But since you never stop hiding behind his name, I'll give you a prophecy as a farewell gift.
"'Your king and his country will disappear before long. I don't remember exactly how it happens, but Radovid does it!'
"Too bad you'll die here and never get the chance to warn your king."
Dethmold's pupils contracted when he heard the prophecy.
He had heard about the Dragonborn Bard's prophecy, the Burning Omen.
Originally, he had not believed it.
But Foltest was dead, and Temeria truly had fallen into a profound crisis.
And now that same man was predicting the destruction of Kaedwen.
The statement was delivered in plain, absolute certainty.
Damn it, the prophecy did not even rhyme!
As Dethmold's thoughts reeled, Victor scraped the daggers in his hands together, throwing off sparks.
Then the witcher charged straight toward him.
At that moment, the world seemed to slow down.
Everything unfolded frame by frame in perfect clarity.
The hawk-nosed, wrinkled mage had beads of sweat gleaming across his face from the agony of his wound.
He screamed desperately and unleashed one final spell in retaliation.
It was completely useless.
He could only stare as Victor twisted gracefully through the air, avoiding the fireball head-on.
A dagger flashed.
Then a roar thundered through the cavern, shaking the air itself.
"Mage Dethmold has been slain!!!"
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