Chapter 162 162: The Secret to Invincible Alchemy
Faroe Isle lies at the southernmost edge of the Skellige Isles, the most primitive and least inhabited of all the islands. Any seasoned traveler who loves wild nature absolutely must not miss this place, for the island overflows with vibrant, living beauty.
Naturally, that lack of population comes with plenty of inconveniences. The one exception is the village and harbor of Harviken, seat of Clan Dimun, where travelers in search of adventure can still leave with fond memories of their visit.
If you happen to arrive just after the clan's warriors have returned from raiding overseas, then once the loot has been divided the village will throw them a feast lasting several days. It is a rare chance to sample the local fare and observe their customs up close.
For details, see the chapter "Feasts and Festivals."
From The Lonely World Guide to Faroe Isle
...
The ship reached harbor at dusk, and even from the deck they could see the great bonfire blazing in the center of town. Vigi glanced over once and declared, "Lucky timing. They've just come back from a raid. Figures, too, since Dimun's the poorest clan. Once winter starts, the others usually stop making long voyages."
Angoulême held the travel guide in her hand and pointed at the section on feasts and festivals. "So if we head over now, they'll feed us for free?"
"Exactly. This is when they're at their friendliest. Blackhand, that bastard, lives up to his name. When he hits an enemy clan, he spares neither village nor ship, like he's slaughtering Black Ones. But Clan Dimun is so poor there's hardly anything worth stealing back from them, so nobody bothers picking fights with them most of the time," Vigi explained as he dropped anchor.
The girl tilted her head and looked at Victor. The boy rubbed the fresh stubble on his chin. "Works for me. Then tonight we'll accept their hospitality. Vigi, I'll leave the crew arrangements to you. Thanks."
"No problem, sir, no... Captain, leave it to me." The rogue thumped his chest in assurance.
"Have some fun too. Meet back up tomorrow at noon."
...
The feast on Faroe Isle was lively, really more like a harvest festival in nature. There was all the booze you could want and more meat than anyone could finish. It felt a bit like the elven revels in the forests around Flotsam, and judging by the variety of bottles on display, this lot had probably raided Nilfgaard this time.
Victor ran into the local ruler, Holger Blackhand, beside the bonfire. At the time, the jarl was drinking and chatting with several clan warriors. Aside from the blind eye, and the darker skin on one arm left by frostbite, he looked no different from any other warrior by the fire.
But the moment Victor drew a little closer, he could feel countless sharp eyes settling on him. So he stopped, bowed slightly, and called out in a clear voice, "Holger of Clan Dimun, Dovahkiin Victor Corion offers you his greetings."
"Dovahkiin!?"
The title he announced stirred a small wave of commotion around them.
"That outsider who passed the Path of Warriors? The new champion of the Fist of Fury?"
"You've heard of him? They say he beat a brown bear to death barehanded..."
"No chance. That's gotta be a lie. Nobody can do something like that."
It seemed old Gunnar had not been exaggerating. Even in this remote place, the Dragonborn's feats had spread far enough for people to whisper about them.
Fixing his remaining eye on the boy, Holger raised a hand toward a young man beside him. The fellow understood at once, walked over to Victor, and spread his hands. "Habbjorn of Clan Dimun. It's an honor to meet the Dragonborn, traveler."
Victor smiled and unfastened his sword, placing it into the young man's hands. "That's right, a traveler. And there's also a letter from Blueboy Lugos for you."
The moment he surrendered both his weapon and the letter of introduction, most of the hostility around him vanished. Victor walked straight over and took the seat beside Holger.
"What's this, then? A letter for me too?" Blackhand studied him with his remaining dark eye, then grabbed up an entire roast leg of beef and handed it to the boy.
Victor passed over Madman Lugos's letter, accepted the meat, and immediately tore into it. Then he leaned sideways and snagged a jug of pepper vodka from beside the next man's feet.
By firelight, Holger skimmed through the letter at a glance, then looked at the Dovahkiin beside him, who was eating like a starving wolf, with an odd expression on his face. After a moment, he said, "Enjoy the feast first. Later tonight, come warm yourself in my longhouse, and then we can talk about your business."
"I'd be honored."
...
Late that night, the revelry paused, or rather, changed venues.
Unlike Kaer Trolde or the strongholds of the great clans, the jarl's longhouse where Holger lived was only wider and warmer than the homes of ordinary folk. In essence it was no different, still a stone structure with a thatched roof.
Victor sat in the hall by the fire. With his sharp hearing, he could just make out the faint sounds of piston-like motion from the inner room, and from the frequency and volume he could conclude one thing with confidence, Blackhand's kidneys were in excellent condition. It went on so long that Angoulême, sprawled across the heated platform opposite him, had already started drooling at the corner of her mouth and fallen fast asleep.
Victor did not feel impatient. He took several pieces of siren vocal cord from his herbal satchel and laid them in his palm. Then he closed his eyes, sank into meditation, and felt out the gift Corion had left him at parting.
Some time later, footsteps sounded. Blackhand came out from the inner room. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Victor."
Victor opened his eyes and smiled back. "No problem. Though you did keep me waiting a good long while."
The jarl gave a self-satisfied chuckle, then sat down cross-legged with no airs about him and shook the letter in his hand. "Dovahkiin, I want to ask you something. Is everything Lugos says in this letter true?"
The moment Holger asked that, Victor felt a sharp jolt of caution rise in his chest. Dandelion had tricked him too many times, and it had trained him well. At moments like this, he absolutely could not acknowledge things too casually. Who knew what kind of nonsense the mad jarl had written in there? If he had decided to play a prank and written that the Dragonborn had come here to plow fields and sow seed, that would be a disaster.
"Since I haven't seen the contents of the letter, I can't give you a definite answer. The letter of introduction was given to me after I helped Blueboy Lugos pass the Trial of Dreams. The jarl said it would save me a great deal of trouble, but I think it's more appropriate if I explain my purpose in person."
"Hahaha! Sharp as a blade, this Dragonborn. But don't overthink it. The letter's full of praise for you, it's just that some of it's so over the top it's hard to believe." As he spoke, he handed the letter straight over.
Victor unfolded it and quickly read through the contents. He had to admit he'd been bitten one too many times by snakes. This time he really had been worrying for nothing.
Madman Lugos had most likely based his description on Blueboy Lugos's version of events, and because it all happened in the dream world, the feats had become outrageously exaggerated. The part about cleaving an armored warrior in half with a single stroke was even written in there. Thank the gods they had not been awake to see the later brawl with all the special effects turned up, or they would probably have thought him Hemdall reborn.
The letter went on to explain that the Dragonborn had come here for a personal vendetta, and hoped Holger Blackhand would do him the favor of revealing Hammond's whereabouts.
Victor silently handed the letter back. "My combat ability is somewhat overstated. In the Trial of Dreams, you can wield greater power than usual. But as for the rest of it, yes, it is as the letter says."
Hearing that answer, Holger stared at Victor's face with that same odd look, as if trying to spot a flower blooming on it. Then he shook his head. "Fine. Hammond is in Trottheim. Leave Harviken and follow the road east. On horseback, it's about two days away. You'll know the place when you see it, there's no mistaking it."
...
Two days later, in the afternoon.
A hawk's cry cut through the sky and drifted into the primeval forest. Then the merlin swooped down gracefully, and the girl began conversing with it in a form of bird-talk nobody else could understand.
But given the talent she had shown for learning other languages, Victor did not believe they were really communicating in bird speech. He understood it instead as a kind of bodily language born of mental resonance. In any case, Angoulême seemed able to communicate only with Catherine.
After only a few bursts of chirping back and forth, she nodded to Victor. "That's right. There are quite a few people on the far slope too, not just the ones in the village in front of us."
Vigi looked at Angoulême with naked envy. "Boss, that hawk-training trick of yours is incredible."
Pleased by the praise, the girl rubbed her nose smugly, but when she turned back to the matter at hand her expression was not optimistic. "Captain, isn't this one a little too exciting? There are at least a hundred pirates. Just the three of us against that many, even with the new weapon, that's going to be rough... What do you think, Vigi?"
Toward the end, after seeing the serious expression on Victor's face, Angoulême simply drew Vigi into it as well. The rogue, realizing it was time to use his brain, thought it over seriously before speaking.
"Probably pretty hard... yeah."
Victor listened to his companions' thoughts without any anger. His own judgment was the same, they could not take this place head-on.
Trottheim had once been famous across all the Skellige Isles because it had been inhabited only by women, every last man having died on raids at sea. But after it later fell into ruin, it had now been repaired and turned into a pirate stronghold.
The entire settlement had been expanded beyond its original footprint and was now enclosed by towering stone walls. The longhouses had been rebuilt into prison cells. Bonfires burned all through the village, torches lit everything bright as day, and guards patrolled at regular intervals. It already had the outline of a paramilitary camp.
Thinking back now to that night in Harviken, Victor finally understood the strange look on Blackhand's face. The man had been laughing at his overconfidence. "And there are quite a few captives inside too. To kill only the pirates without harming the prisoners..."
No wonder Holger had said, near the end of their talk, that Victor could come back anytime if he needed help. No wonder Habbjorn had said the same thing when he saw them off outside the village.
Most likely the Lugos father and son had praised the Dovahkiin so extravagantly that the Dimuns wanted to see him make a fool of himself, charging in full of confidence and then crawling back muddy and humiliated.
Luckily, things were different now. If this had been before he entered the Cave of Dreams, he might have needed a more roundabout plan. But now, with the gift Corion had left him, the Voice of Death, he ought to be able to solve this problem by smashing straight through it.
Once he had finished surveying the area, Victor retreated deep into the forest, pitched a tent, set up a cauldron, and hung out the sign for his alchemy workshop. The confidence in his manner also infected his two companions.
Watching him stir the mixture without a word, Angoulême was the first to ask, "Vic, do you really have a way to deal with that many people?"
The stirring rod paused briefly. Victor nodded. "Of course. The captain will teach you something. There's an old Bell Town saying, 'There's no problem that can't be solved with an explosion, and if there is, then the blast just wasn't big enough.' A hundred pirates are nothing special. Blow them up a few times and that'll be the end of it."
After spending a little more time with him, even Vigi now dared to ask questions on his own. "Captain, when you say the blast wasn't big enough, you mean the bomb just wasn't large enough?"
"You may understand it that way." Victor gave them the mysterious smile of a back-alley mad genius.
Angoulême covered her mouth with one hand to hide a laugh, because that smile of the captain's really was far too sleazy right now. She knew that was an extremely rude way to describe it, but she insisted on the word anyway. Whenever the captain talked about Bell Town customs or cracked some dry Zerrikanian joke, he always wore that same smile.
And every time he smiled like that, it meant someone was about to have a very bad day. Thankfully, this time it was not going to be her.
The captain kept stirring with one hand while setting down two slabs of beef in front of his companions with the other. "Take a look. Can either of you tell me what the difference is between these two pieces of beef?"
At the question, Vigi widened his eyes and studied them with utmost seriousness, while Angoulême had no desire whatsoever to answer. Fortunately, Victor had not really been asking. If they actually knew, that would have been the astonishing part.
With supreme confidence, he tapped them with his finger. "The piece on the left has the Void trait 'Quality Improvement.' If I toss it into the cauldron and make it into an item together with the rest, then activate that trait during inheritance, the finished product's quality goes up by ten percent.
"As for the piece on the right, its Void trait is 'Destructive Power Increase.' Activating it raises the effect of an offensive item by five percent. And my current limit for transfer, the equivalent of enchantment transfer, is two activated traits per item."
After listening in silence, Angoulême felt like she had turned to stone. Was the captain under too much pressure? Why did it seem like the disease had flared up especially badly this time? He was holding two pieces of beef and spouting utter nonsense.
"Wow! So amazing! What incredible beef!" Vigi exclaimed, studying them from left to right, trying to spot the difference.
Watching Vigi respond with such enthusiasm only made the girl feel dizzier, with something clogged in her chest.
Now that somebody was playing along, Victor smiled brightly and continued. "That's normal, don't worry, it's perfectly ordinary not to see it. This is the captain's gift, Listening to the Voice of Death. As long as the alchemical material originally came from animal tissue, then once it falls into my hands it will actively tell me its hidden effects and Void traits."
"Whoa! That's incredible!" The rogue looked thoroughly energized. "So every piece of beef has a trait? And can you hear other kinds of voices too, Captain?"
"Excellent question, Vigi. No, not every piece of beef has a trait, and not every material can be heard. For the moment, I can only listen to the Voice of Death. But I have a feeling that in the future I'll hear more, flowers, herbs, minerals, all sorts of things. And some rare traits will be far more powerful than you can imagine."
Though he did not really understand it, it still sounded absurdly impressive, and Vigi stared with bull-wide eyes, thrilled beyond words.
Meanwhile, as Angoulême watched the two men happily batting questions and answers back and forth, a wave of sadness suddenly rose in her heart. Without her even noticing, her place as the captain's favorite straight-man had been shaken. Wasn't she supposed to be the one who believed in the captain more than anyone?
After reflecting hard, she launched a counterattack at once. "So then, you're going to add these two pieces of beef into the Demon Dust mixture, and then activate those two traits at the end, and that'll make a stronger version of Demon Dust?"
Victor patted her shoulder approvingly. "Exactly. As expected of you, you've grasped the essence of it. Right now we don't have better materials, and I can't make a higher purity product, so using Void traits to force an improvement is a solution worth trying."
// I hope you enjoyed the massive release. As always thanks for the Power Stones, comments, reviews, etc. And thanks to the supporters on Ptrn for voting in the poll.
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