Roy, Auckes, and Serrit split up their jobs. Auckes and Serrit would look through the living quarters and experimentation area on the right, while Roy picked Kiyan's sword up. He flicked it around to see how it felt.
The young witcher clasped his index and middle finger together, and he brushed them along the back of the blade. A frown furrowed his brows. There was actually a hint of rust on the blade, perhaps from the lack of greasing.
He held the hilt with one hand and the blade with the other to observe the back of the sword closely.
Components: Dark iron ingots, cured draconid leather, powdered monster tissue, silver ingot…
Specs: Weighs 5.06 pounds, hilt measures 11 inches, blade measures 40 inches.
Strengthened Yrden: Yrden has slightly increased strength when you're equipped with this sword.
Freeze: Whenever you hit an enemy, there's a small chance to freeze the target. -10 to Dexterity when Frozen.'
"Not bad. The freezing effect is gonna make big, slow monsters easier to hunt." It's as good as Viper swords, but Kiyan hasn't been taking care of it. "Hold on for a bit. I'll give you a good shower once we get out of this place."
He tucked Moonblade into his inventory space. We'll decide who gets this when we leave.
Roy went to the end of the passage in the center and approached the hexagram Kiyan was meditating in.What he saw surprised him. He didn't notice it earlier, but now that he was closer, he noticed a bunch of thick blueprints on the ground. When he picked them up and saw what they were, the young witcher was delighted.
Feline trousers, feline gauntlets, feline boots, and feline armor. Four blueprints all at once, and they detail how to make every part. "Well, this is a big haul."
Even an official Cat like Felix was only wearing regular armor. These blueprints were more valuable than anyone could imagine.
"Gonna give them a surprise later."
Roy now had two Viper diagrams, four Manticore diagrams, and four Cat diagrams. These will be important to the school's expansion.
Roy picked it up and flipped to the first page.
Luckily we were teleported directly into my laboratory. It's good to be home. I had grown sick to the gills of that leaky tub. I hope that storm I summoned smashed it into those craggy rocks off the Grassy Knoll shore. The experiments which my students conducted on drowners in my absence did not yield the expected results. As usual, I must do everything myself.
I will administer a brew of medicinal opium to the subject. This "milk of the poppy" will keep the witcher in a state of half-consciousness, and thus incapable of resistance. Commencing studies.'
"Well, this answers some questions." Realization struck Roy. "The lab's owner wrote this journal. He could summon storms. This is no ordinary sorcerer. Perhaps he's a famous one too." And yet this cruel bastard actually wanted the boat to crash and kill everyone on it. "And his student was Matteo, the guy who killed drowners with puffer fish toxin."
Drowners were one thing, but performing these experiments on a witcher was not what Roy expected. That damn sorcerer. Did they kill their own humanity while they were doing all those experiments? "Milk of the poppy… He used that to numb Kiyan and took him back to this lab."
Fury lit up in his eyes, burning his soul. Ever since he became a witcher and went through all the trials and tribulations that came with it, he saw himself as a proud member of this community. Anyone who would do something so horrible to my colleagues will pay the price.
Roy took a deep breath and held his anger down. No. Saving that man takes precedence.
He flipped to the second entry. The gist was that Kiyan told the sorcerer about the Cat School's details and how they would train would-be witchers. After he was thoroughly tortured, of course.
Irenues noticed that most Cats had elven blood. He suspected that an Aen Seidhe started the Cat School, and his guess was right. Roy knew the founder of the Cat School was a part-elf who had the worst of life thrown at him. But to torture a witcher just to get this information? "Unforgivable!"
The Brotherhood of Sorcerers specifically prohibited anyone from performing experiments on humans, and that was inclusive of dwarves, elves, and witchers. Anyone who broke this law would be subjected to dimeritium cuffs and a century of house arrest. Serious offenders would be kicked out of the brotherhood.
Of course, consensual experimentations and anything that had a contract of safety guarantee was another story. Of course, experiments no one knew anything about were as well.
Roy flipped through the entries, and every one was worse than the last. The sorcerer's experiments elevated into total perversion. Torture, poison, fire, ice, starvation, and dehydration were commonplace.
That kind of hellish life lasted for months, and Kiyan turned into something resembling a monster.
"When I see Coral again, I'll ask her if this bastard's still alive." Roy made up his mind. That body out there probably belonged to Irenues or Matteo. Either way, one of those scums survived, and I intend to give them a warm welcome. Oh, a very warm welcome indeed.
Roy thought he had seen everything, but the last page's content made his eyes bulge.
'Conclusion: As I suspected, the witcher is a superb energumen! A demon trapped in such an excellently prepared body will become death incarnate, vengeful wrath made flesh – and placed under my command. No one has succeeded in creating a being of such power since the times of Malaspin and Alzur.'
"So Kiyan's mind is not his own anymore?" Roy turned to the captive creature. "Is mindless murder all he knows? No… No, that's not it." He refuted himself in the same breath. Observe showed me one important message. His spirit and body are twisted, and something else is within him.
"To be precise, there's something else dwelling in his body, and that… is the demon. Somebody used this hexagram to summon it."
Roy thought of another possibility. Two wills are fighting for control, so Kiyan's Will is far lower than most people's. The witcher's soul is trapped in this beat-up body, while that demon Irenues summoned pinned Kiyan down and took control. How the heck can I save him?
Roy shut the laboratory journal and held his vibrating pendant down. He looked at the statue standing over the hexagram. It was surprisingly realistic. Roy could almost see a cheetah lying on the platform, staring into the void. It would have been a cheetah if not for its abnormal number of claws, split ears, and protruding spi… Hey, wait a minute. Why's there a tabby cat on the statue's spine? It's yawning and scratching its chin.
"Gryphon? How'd you get there? Come back down!" Roy picked Gryphon up and tucked it into his hood. He scanned the feline statue's tail, but it didn't seem like any feline animal he had seen.
'Statue of an unknown animal.'
There's elemental energy surrounding it, and this feeling it's giving off is really weird. Unfamiliar, even…
Wait. Unfamiliar? Roy got an idea. He had no idea how this statue came to be or what its use was, but it had something to do with the demon dwelling in Kiyan.
"Time for a discussion." Roy was a little excited. "There's five of us, and those guys are veterans. They might actually come up with some kind of exorcism and bring that guy back."