The Witcher: The Alchemist Who Walked the Witcher’s Road

The position of Spikeroog Island lies in the northwestern part of the isles, across the Allenker sound from Ard Skellig.

Though it is not the most popular tourist destination in the isles, its unique charm is hard to resist. Along the island's southern and western shores, the snow-capped peaks are among its most striking sights.

Travelers who enjoy brawling would also do well to visit Spikeroog. In the village of Hov on the island's northern side stands a famous arena where local warriors test their strength, and where the renowned Champion of Champions accepts challengers.

South of the arena lies the village of Svorlag, ruled by Clan Brokvar. The village sits in a scenic bay, and during the summer Belleteyn feast it hosts a grand celebration, making that the best time to visit.

To the south of Svorlag stretches a primeval wilderness that serves as Clan Brokvar's main hunting ground. Those with little travel experience should not venture there. It is wild, untamed, utterly deserted, and full of dangerous creatures of all kinds, see the Flora and Fauna chapter for details. When traveling near the caves along the coast, take special care.

, The Lonely World Guide to Spikeroog

...

As the ruler of Clan Brokvar, Udalryk's longhouse, the center of his rule, not only stood at the highest point in Svorlag, it was also the tallest building on all of Spikeroog.

That morning, Catherine swept past the longhouse overhead with a sharp eagle's cry. Below her, Angoulême Corion, chief enforcer of the Phantom Troupe, crouched on the ridge of the roof, using the ability she had temporarily named Eagle-Eye Vision to observe the world.

Her old danger sense had grown strong, absurdly strong, so strong that even she could hardly believe it.

Now, the girl could instinctively sense how people and objects were connected to her. It appeared as colored radiance, like an aura seen through the mind's eye.

Different colors marked different people or things. Red meant enemies or spilled blood. Blue meant allies. White meant a source of information or a hidden point. Gold meant a target or a suspect.

She had once been able to sense hostility, but only that much. Now that sixth sense had clearly expanded its line of business.

She could look straight through the roof and see the blue glows below, Svani and Cerys, both still asleep. The druid Hjort, glowing white, was grinding herbs. Bergthora was nursing a child, Eiric was mending a fishing net. And Lord Udalryk, shining gold, was pacing restlessly in his room, cutting his own arm now and then with a small knife.

Within my territory, there are no secrets!?

A detection ability this unreasonable, this domineering, had of course not appeared out of thin air. To trace its origin, one had to go back to the time they were heading to Hindarsfjall.

That day on the ship, when Victor returned her enchanted armor, his words still rang in her ears. "Damn it! The captain always gives you the best, and this time's no exception!"

"Then what exactly did you enchant this armor with for me?"

"Potential enhancement and offense-defense enhancement. The second one makes your swings a bit stronger and your defense a bit steadier. The first one can draw out a little of your potential, assuming you've got any."

Not long after that, during the battle against Morkvarg the werewolf, she had vaguely sensed that she could see the blue glow of her companions, though at the time she had not connected it to the armor's effect.

Later, as her experiences piled up and she gradually figured out what the different glows meant, things had developed to the point that whenever she put on the armor, nothing in the world could hide from her Eagle-Eye Vision. Sometimes her sixth sense even guided her toward things she herself did not yet know.

Take the red glow for enemies, for example. Angoulême had not noticed it when she first arrived on the island, but after spending two days perched on the rooftop, letting herself be seen and drawing attention, she had now spotted several people harboring ill intent. Their vivid red glows stood out in the crowd so brightly that they were like fireflies in the dark, impossible to miss.

Of course, the girl was not only baiting troublemakers into showing themselves. More importantly, being up on a high point gave her a sense of ease, as if her view had opened wide. Her mind's eye could see farther from up here. On level ground, her detection range was about sixty yards.

But crouched up here, she could see twice that, a full hundred and twenty.

Just as she was considering how to silently deal with those ill-intentioned people, blue-glowing Cerys was already calling up from below, "Angoulême, get down here. We need to set out today!"

Committing those red-glowing troublemakers to memory, the girl stood up and leaped straight off the roof in an elegant motion. Her instincts pointed out three spots on the wall to kick, telling her that if she followed the prompts, she would land safely.

The drop, however, scared Sparrowhawk badly enough that she rushed forward two steps to catch Angoulême. What should have been a stylish landing turned into the two of them tumbling into a heap.

Standing nearby, Svani shook her head, then helped both of her sisters to their feet, one with each hand. She said to Cerys, "Next time, don't try to catch the wild girl when she jumps off a roof. She scared me the same way yesterday. She's got a talent for judging her landing point. You're more likely to get hurt trying to catch her."

Angoulême grinned. "It's fine. I'm happy she cares about me. So where are we going to investigate today?"

Sparrowhawk reached out and brushed the dust from her clothes, then angrily smacked the girl on the backside. "Based on the information we've gathered, the person Udalryk keeps muttering apologies to is mainly his dead brother, Aki. I suspect he's being haunted by a wraith, and that's why he's become so nervous and erratic. So today we're going to Clan Brokvar's old family home to see if we can find any relevant clues."

Hearing Cerys's latest progress, Angoulême's expression suddenly turned a little strange. Stroking the pouch in her arms, she muttered to herself, "No way... can a prophet really be that uncanny?"

With her mind in a whirl, the girl followed her sisters out of the village. As they passed the notice board, she stopped out of habit to read what was posted there.

...

The Enemy Never Sleeps

The guards warn us that spies from Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms may be among us. Any suspicious person is to be brought before the jarl.

, Udalryk an Brokvar

...

Wangar Executed

The man known as Wangar the Blasphemer has been put to death for insulting our great mother, the goddess Freya. His tongue was burned in the temple fire, and his mouth was fed to venomous snakes. Let this be a warning to anyone who dares speak filth against our mother in the heavens.

, Council of Elders

...

At the same moment Angoulême was reading the notices, on Undvik, south of Spikeroog, inside Clan Tordarroch Forge.

Because of the havoc wrought by the ice giant, the place had long since been completely abandoned, with not a soul in sight. More horrifying still, the giant had turned the forge into a food storehouse, so great numbers of remains had been hooked with iron anchors and left hanging in the hall to dry.

And the prophet Victor, the one the girl had been muttering about, was at that moment lying in one of the forge's rest rooms, one of the few places lucky enough not to have been destroyed.

Opening his eyes, the boy stared at the unfamiliar ceiling. After several hours of good sleep, he had finally recovered from the state of being tired enough to die.

Traveling through the mine tunnels all night had originally seemed like a good idea, but unexpectedly, the recent endless supply of lavish meals had attracted rotfiends, and at night they were even more active.

These ugly, roughly human-shaped creatures were extremely aggressive. Beneath their hides were rotting muscle and tough bone. Though they fed on corpses, they were more than happy to sample fresh meat if they came across living people, and they could run as fast as a horse.

If that were all, it would have been manageable, no more than an upgraded ghoul. The problem was that rotfiends were full of venom. They could spew toxic fumes, and those fumes worked even on witchers, who were immune to most poisons.

And before dying from serious wounds, they would explode and spray out all the vile essence in their bodies... if you were careless enough to get drenched head to toe, nine times out of ten you died on the spot.

So at first, knowing how nasty they were, the boy had grabbed the scoundrel and turned tail to run. The Phantom Troupe had been chased in rather embarrassingly.

Luckily, he soon realized that the toxic fumes were highly flammable. In the mine, where air circulated slowly, that meant any spark was lethal to them, once lit, they went up in glorious flames.

So Victor's Blazing Strike had hardly needed any sword oil at all, one slash was nearly enough for each rotfiend, while the stench rolling off them constantly gave away the positions of their ambushes.

Vigi, meanwhile, held a torch in each hand for light and support, making for excellent teamwork. And so, wearing masks and drinking Golden Oriole, they had finally broken through the mine before midnight and staggered their way into the forge.

Then they found an undamaged rest room. They had barely shut the door before both of them passed out in sleep.

"Tch, that was brutal... never thought there'd be so many rotfiends." The boy, awake now, blinked and muttered to himself, as if he could still smell last night's stench in his nose.

He jumped off the bed, but did not rush to kick the scoundrel awake. Better to let him sleep a bit longer. What Victor needed to do next was make the most of the time and clean out the forge's tools, especially the few Yoana had specifically asked for.

Basic tools, tools used to directly deform billets.

Auxiliary tools, those used to grip, turn, and move billets or forged pieces, such as various tongs.

And finally measuring tools, used to measure the size and shape of billets and forged pieces, such as rulers, calipers, and templates.

But before work came breakfast.

Sitting on the snowy cliffside, enjoying the view as he ate his usual vitality broth and potatoes, Victor looked out over a vast openness in every direction, under a sky split wide by the clouds. Before the giant appeared, this place must have been a fine sightseeing spot too.

I look on the snowy mountains in all their grandeur, perhaps the snowy mountains look back on me the same way.

After breakfast and morning exercises, Victor returned to the forge and started moving everything out. Aside from the tools Yoana had named, anything that seemed as though it might be useful went straight into the herbal satchel.

A true hero should know better than to take so much as a needle or a thread from the villagers!

As he worked, the boy planned his next steps in his head. When he had rushed into the forge yesterday, he had been fully prepared to turn into a one-man demolition squad and start chaining Grapeshot blasts, because memories from his past life told him there was supposed to be an ice troll here.

But instead, the place had been calm. Aside from the horror of the hall still being used as a larder, no monsters had appeared at all.

So once he finished moving the tools, he would wake Vigi, head down the plank path to Dorve to rejoin Hjalmar, and then march on the ice giant's lair. Together with the others, they would rid the people of this scourge and win the title of Giant-Slayer.

Wraith Killer was not a bad title, but Giant-Slayer was obviously more impressive.

After spending quite a while clearing out the tools and finalizing the plan, Victor should have left.

Instead, he stood in the hall for a moment.

He closed his eyes, then opened them again.

In the end, he still had to take those remains down and cremate them. They should not be left hanging there forever.

And while he was carrying the bodies, he failed to notice the cup of water on the table, trembling again and again as ripples spread across its surface.

...

Spikeroog Island, the back hills of Svorlag, Clan Brokvar's old family home.

The house had been abandoned for a long time. Wind and snow slipped in through the cracks every now and then, and the floorboards creaked beneath their feet.

Angoulême brushed her hair back. "Darling, now that we're already in here, could you please tell us what exactly we're looking for?"

Cerys turned around and spread her hands. "We're here to find a sword."

"A sword? And why is that sword so important?" Svani asked in confusion.

Sparrowhawk fell silent for a moment, but when she thought about it, during the past few days on the island, the only one truly investigating had been herself. One of her dear sisters, Svani, had never cared much for this kind of thing, while the wild girl, who should have been a useful assistant, had been strangely unlike her usual sharp self. She had spent her days wandering the streets in a daze or crouching on rooftops in the wind, no one knew what she was up to. So it was true that the two of them had no idea what they had come here to find.

After collecting her thoughts, she began to explain seriously. "That sword is called Brokvar. It's Udalryk's family blade, passed down through his line. Remember what I just said, the grudge between Udalryk and his brother Aki began because of that sword.

According to custom, the family sword should have gone to the eldest son, which meant Udalryk. But his father placed Brokvar in the hands of his younger brother Aki instead."

Svani stroked her chin and sighed. "Wow. In Skellige, that's a massive insult."

Sparrowhawk nodded. "Serious enough that Udalryk was willing to violate sacred law. He openly challenged his father's decision. For that, he was chained to a pillar with everything below his waist submerged in the sea for three full days.

After the punishment ended, the old jarl believed working together at sea might mend the rift between the brothers. So he sent Udalryk and Aki out fishing together. Sailing has settled many disputes among Skelligers, but unfortunately, that time it failed badly.

A sudden storm struck, and in the chaos Aki fell overboard. Udalryk was busy handling the sail, and by the time he heard his brother crying for help, it was already too late."

Angoulême leaned against the wall and narrowed her eyes. "Didn't hear him, or didn't want to hear him?"

"Some islanders share that suspicion, but no one dares say it openly. I don't want to make rash judgments, but I do believe that whatever happened that day, Udalryk was deeply affected by it. And it very likely has something to do with that sword."

Angoulême said, "All right, then back to the beginning. Cerys, why do you need that sword?"

"I think Aki's ghost may want it back. Ever since I was little, islanders have said that Udalryk is chosen by the gods, that the gods speak to him. I used to believe it, but seeing the situation now, I think he's being haunted, by his brother's ghost."

Svani frowned thoughtfully. "I've heard since childhood that he hears the voices of the gods too, but now you're suddenly saying ghost. Do you really think that makes sense?"

"I don't care. I don't believe those are the gods speaking. You've seen him too, he's covered in scars! I asked him where they came from, and he said the voice inside him commanded him to harm himself so the gods would be honored.

I find that explanation deeply suspicious. There's no sense in the gods ordering him to mutilate himself, so I don't think it's the gods at all, I think it's Aki. Maybe Udalryk let Aki die, and now the ghost wants revenge.

I've spoken to Hjort the druid. He swore that Udalryk only began hearing those voices after Aki died. I don't think Hjort is wrong, he knew both brothers from childhood.

In short, I think that if we can return Brokvar to Aki, maybe he'll let Udalryk go."

At last Cerys had finished explaining, and she was sure both her companions could now understand her reasoning.

Suddenly, clap, clap, two sharp claps from nearby drew Sparrowhawk's attention. Angoulême reached into her clothes.

"All right, darling, now I've got all the pieces I needed. If we're really dealing with a ghost, your idea might not be a bad one. But I hope you'll look at this book first.

I borrowed it from Archdruid Ermion. The page with the bookmark in it might help you."

The turn in the conversation was so abrupt that Cerys stared for a moment, but she still reached out and took the book. Written neatly across the cover were the words Beyond the Veil.

It was a book introducing rare monsters from beyond this world.

//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters //[email protected]/Razeil0810