Chapter 111: The Hunter
A gentle, tentative knock vibrated against the tightly closed oak door, followed by a highly cautious, muffled call from the corridor. "Master."
Following an exceptionally long, heavy stretch of silence, a gravelly, rasping voice that sounded exactly like a dull iron saw scraping relentlessly against dead oak bark finally echoed from within the dark room. "Did my tongue not explicitly command your boots to desist from disrupting my watch?"
"Master... I swear across my life readout that my presence harbored zero intention to break your focus!" The servant anchoring the hallway outside was clearly terrified, his voice shaking. "It defines the Marquis. His Lordship asserts that his mantle must secure an immediate audience with your person."
An unbearable, suffocating silence descended over the chambers. Just as the old retainer's resolve was on the absolute verge of a total collapse, he finally caught the low vibration of a response that sounded exactly like a royal pardon. "Grant his boots entry. Direct his lordship to leave his entire escort behind the outer gates!"
"Understood, sir!" the servant hurriedly replied, turning on his heel to sprint toward the primary courtyard checkpoints as if fleeing from the jaws of a predator.
A brief watch down the clock, a middle-aged aristocrat draped in a magnificent silk robe of state, a fine steel longsword resting against his hip, cleared the threshold accompanied by the trembling guide.
As his leather boots tracked a path through the long-abandoned botanical gardens filling the front courtyard, the nobleman paused his stride, his brow lifting slightly. "Identify the location of the apprentices tasked with cultivating these valuable medicinal herbs."
"Reporting to your grace, every single trainee was systematically dismissed from the estate by the master's own hand," the old servant replied, executing a low bow. "Across the recent moons, the absolute majority of the students had already packed their satchels to clear the ledger, and the final remaining apprentices were forcefully driven past the outer walls by the master three suns past. Consequently, the entire botanical garden has fallen into absolute neglect."
Marquis Osarion stopped dead, his sharp eyes surveying the bleak perimeter. Not only had the delicate, exotic flora wove into a sickly yellow rot beneath the winter air, but the entire courtyard complex displayed the unmistakable marks of total, long-term abandonment. The grand central fountain, which had been historically enchanted with high-tier liturgical circles to prevent the water from freezing during the deep frosts, had entirely ceased its operations. The holly trees flanking the iron fencing had mutated into wild, deformed configurations, and the broken paving stones were completely buried beneath a thick, heavy shroud of undisturbed snow.
He fixed a cold look onto the servant. "By what calculus did the entire academy population clear the grounds, leaving your solitary silhouette behind the walls?"
The old retainer, whose wrinkled frame had logged more than fifty winters across the capital, offered a bitter, weary smile. "Your Grace, my hands have executed the duties of a personal butler to manage the master's comfort for thirty winters across this estate. Navigating an age of my density, my heart genuinely preserves zero alternative coordinates to seek a new livelihood. Furthermore, the master permanently requires an experienced attendant to manage his basic daily nutrition, consequently, his will reluctantly authorized my name to maintain its station."
Osarion cast his gaze toward the massive, dark silhouette of the central laboratory rising in the distance. "Detail the current trajectory of Master Rolo's psychological stability."
"The configuration has scored as exceptionally volatile, milord. The exact watch your boots clear his inner chambers, pray, utilize the utmost caution to desist from agitating his center, strictly to prevent any tragic accidents across the room," the old man urged with absolute sincerity.
"My own intellect commands the parameters of this gamble; lead the vanguard."
Roughly five minutes down the timeline, Marquis Osarion intersected Rolo's position deep within the absolute isolation of the shuttered alchemy vault. The ancient butler hand-delivered two cups of hot herbal infusion before immediately pulling his boots backward to clear the laboratory, leaving the two monumental figures entirely alone inside the gloom.
"Select a bench." Rolo was completely engrossed in manipulating a sequence of glass vials across the primary research table. Hearing the heavy rustle of silk behind his spine, his neck desisted from executing a turn; he simply issued a short greeting in that same hoarse, bark-like whisper.
Osarion declined to settle his weight onto the cushions. Instead, he strode over to the tall arched window, his fingers hoisting the heavy, multi-layered black felt curtains that completely choked out the day. He wove his features into a deep frown. "What specific failure has compromised this laboratory, old friend? Your physical presentation lacked this grotesque density the last watch my carriage dropped anchor before your gates."
Within the suffocating, dim amber light filtering from a solitary fat candle, Rolo sat huddled low over the oak table, his physical posture hunched and bent exactly like a curled-up shrimp. As his clawed fingers poured and swirled a volatile series of test tubes and alchemical beakers together, a thick, greasy, purple-black smoke continuously billowed out from the glass, enveloping the entire workspace in a chaotic, eerie atmospheric pressure that made an operator feel as if millions of venomous insects were actively crawling across their bare skin.
"Desist from touching the drapes. Certain forbidden formulations are conformed to execute their synthesis entirely free of the contamination of direct starlight. This variable does not concern the strategy of your house!" Rolo countered with a flat, freezing delivery.
"But the status of your physical frame..."
"My frame commands an exceptional tier of power... an absolute, un-rivaled tier!" Rolo violently arrested his alchemical movements, pivoting his torso to lock his face directly onto Osarion's position. The sudden mutation wove such an immediate shockwave of horror through the nobleman's mind that his boots involuntarily executed a frantic half-step backward against the floorboards.
That once dignified, serious, and deeply respected countenance had been completely, systematically distorted into a nightmare visage. The facial muscles and sub-dermal fat had twisted together in a bizarre, asymmetrical alignment, and the upper and lower lips had shrunken back into paper-thin layers of dead skin, exposing a sequence of deformed, raw gums and row upon row of jagged, overlapping teeth.
Yet, the absolute peak of the horror emerged from his gaze. His bulging, un-blinking eyeballs gleamed with a visible, blood-red luminescence across the dark. The precise microsecond their eyes locked, Marquis Osarion registered a freezing sensation through his marrow, looking exactly like a warrior facing down a foul, stagnant lake of sacrificial blood!
"Hehehe... audit the sheer, ignorant cowardice mapping your aristocratic features!" Rolo chuckled, the sound emerging like stones grinding in a graveyard. "What specific variable across my scales incites such a pathetic terror within your breast? Your house cleared the upper ring to seek my laboratory explicitly to guarantee the absolute victory of that hypocritical, thoroughly boring, and self-proclaimed fair shadow bet dividing the ministries, did you not?"
"Across this watch, my tongue hand-delivers the data: my marrow has mathematically never registered a volume of pure physical power that matches the voltage coursing through my veins on this night. My spirit records an absolute satisfaction regarding the raw chemical herbs your smugglers provided to my forge. Regardless of what specific tactical parameters Duke Duolis has engineered across those mountain giants, and regardless of what tier of elite legion heroes his gold recruits to contest my path down on the sand... their collective lines score as nothing more than fragile paper before the swing of my cleaver. I calculate that calculation suffices to satisfy the ledger of your house, does it not?"
Osarion strained every nerve to forcefully regulate the frantic acceleration of his pulse, his voice trembling by a microscopic fraction despite his courtly training. "My intellect wove zero simulations predicting those raw northern botanicals would trigger such a terrifying, monstrous transformation across your biology. Tell me the truth, Rolo—do these structural changes across your flesh hold a status of permanent, irreversible compliance?"
"Irreversible?"
Rolo let out a cold, mocking laugh that sounded exactly like an executioner listening to a ridiculous joke across the scaffold. "Your vocabulary has once again lowered the absolute baseline of my respect for your intellect, Osarion. An absolute certainty—this layout is permanent! The systematic acquisition of a world-breaking power must permanently be balanced by a corresponding, catastrophic price written onto the vessel. Does that text not comprise the most elementary common sense governing the high arts?"
Osarion chose to ignore the flagrant offensiveness formatting the alchemist's speech. Following a long, tense watch of silence, he adjusted his silk mantle, spoke coldly. "Your name stands across the capital as the premier authority of the Perfumer Guild. My office will permanently desist from interfering across the parameters of your technical expertise. But regardless of what specific demon your flesh morphs to inhabit down the timeline, ground this command deep within your calculations: do not forget the absolute terms of our covenant."
"My memory archives the entry," Rolo muttered dismissively, his jagged teeth gnashing against the dark. "Liquidate as many Mountain Trolls and opposing champion lives as the sand can swallow, ensuring our banner emerges as the terminal, undisputed victor of the Battle Festival tournament. Your mouth lacks the requirement to continuously repeat the code to my ear!"
"Concurrently... utilize the absolute peak of your tactical awareness to identify the specific banners of your opponents!" Osarion warned grimly, his hand tightening against the pommel of his straight sword. "Carlyle... the solitary legitimate bloodline born to Caven Duolis... my intelligence networks have locked the data point proving his steel will actively participate across the brackets of this Festival. Regardless of what chaotic variables detonate across the sewer warrens during the hunt, your blade is legally forbidden from harming a hair on his head. The solitary asset my strategy is chasing is the executive command of the Northern Legion lines—my house registers zero desire to become the terminal, mortal enemy of the Duoris Family across the generations!"
Rolo gave a brief, impatient nod of his mutated skull, turning his spine back toward the research table to continue distilling the volatile aromatic shimmering within his beaker.
Osarion fixed a final, deeply analytical look onto the hunched monster, his fingers gripping his sword hilt as he pivoted on his heel to stride rapidly toward the exit door. His spirit recorded absolute zero desire to maintain his presence within this dark sanctuary for a single extra watch of the clock unless the absolute survival of his house demanded the friction.
The exact watch the echoes of the nobleman's leather boots had completely evaporated from the outer courtyard cobbles, Rolo finalized the synthesis of a secondary vessel of the fluid. He placed the heavy crystal perfume vial—which broadcasted a sinister, purplish-black luster beneath the tallow flame—firmly onto the oak boards. He stood straight, his muscles popping as he stretched his bent, horribly deformed neck vertebrae, before tracking his boots toward a massive, full-length mirror hanging against a cedar cabinet in the shadowed corner of the vault.
Auditing the twisted, heavily muscled, and demonic silhouette staring back through the glass, Rolo stood completely frozen across a vast watch of the night, before letting out a soft, low hiss of a laugh—a sound that wove an ambiguous line separating absolute self-mockery from a bottomless bitterness.
He extended his clawed palm to press flat against the surface of the mirror, his will igniting a pale blue, glowing magical ward across the glass. A microsecond later, a dark, jagged dimensional crack violently split the reflection in two, the panels sliding aside to un-veil a massive, hidden stone sanctum behind the cabinet.
Suspended across the primary weapon racks directly fronting the entrance hung more than ten massive great-swords of varying operational lengths—every solitary cutting edge meticulously forged from the razor-sharp, jagged Horns of the Omen, weapons engineered explicitly to inflict an excruciating, soul-shattering trauma upon the flesh of the enemy. In the absolute center of the armory stood a heavy iron mannequin clad in a lightweight leather armor pattern that mirrored the traditional robes of the Perfumer Guild. Yet, the helmet anchoring the collar was cleanly carved from a massive, weathered skull that out-registered the dimensions of a standard human citizen, its crest completely ringed by a dense cluster of twisted, ridged Omen horns. A permanent, leering, and obscenely ecstatic brass smile was cast across the visor plates.
Furthermore, arrayed across the heavy wooden shelving lining both flanks of the secret vault lay the absolute totality of Rolo's private trophies. He had meticulously crafted hundreds of dried anatomical specimens harvested from every single Child of the Omen his steel had liquidated across his nocturnal crusades. Snow-white skulls, severed horns, and cured hides packed the shelves to the absolute brim of the rafters; the fresh specimens anchored closest to the entry door were still dripping a thick layer of wet crimson blood onto the stone floor.
Rolo narrowed his blood-red, bulging eyes against the stench, drawing a long, deep breath into his lungs as an expression of total, rapturous ecstasy wove across his twisted features.
He raised his thumb, slowly tracing the grand geometric symbol of the Golden Order directly across the scarred skin covering his chest, his hoarse voice chanting into the dark with the absolute, fanatical devotion of a holy crusader.
"The agonizing torment and the bleeding wails of the defiled constitute our highest, most sacred sacrifice to reinforce the roots of the Erdtree... may the supreme Law endure un-broken under the stars forever!"
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