Chapter 103

After killing the two ghouls, Wayne didn't relax his vigilance, but held the Shiv in his hand, quietly waiting for the magic inside to accumulate again.

After all, the ghouls were just side dishes attracted by the corpses, and the real culprit who killed the soldiers hadn't appeared yet.

Three minutes later, when the magic inside the Shiv was fully accumulated again, Wayne gripped the short sword tightly and walked toward the depths of the mine cave.

This mine cave was old, with a huge internal space. I don't know when it started to be built. Because there was a cave roof to cover it, it was probably used as a warehouse at ordinary times.

Looking around, various stone building materials cut into shapes were stored inside this cave, and burning braziers were left in various places in the cave as lighting objects.

After Wayne scanned it roughly, he didn't run around, but slowly explored inward along the direction where the corpses emitted the smell.

Advancing dozens of meters following the smell of the corpses, he arrived near a tunnel that seemed to have been excavated recently.

Wayne found that a dozen or so corpses dressed as soldiers were scattered inside and outside the tunnel, having long since lost their breath. Most of them died miserably, their bodies were slashed by sharp weapons in many places, and they were basically no longer in human form, which also conformed to the characteristics of monsters like wraiths.

Wraiths were born from extremely intense negative emotions and would feel endless, indescribable pain. They were full of anger, hatred, and jealousy, so they were both hateful and jealous of the living, wishing to kill all humans.

Like other evil spirits, they were intangible, so they were not harmed by fire, toxins, or bleeding weapons. It was precisely because of this that basically only spellcasters who could use magic and monster expert witchers could deal with them.

Seeing this situation, Wayne became even more vigilant. He immediately added a strengthened version of the Quen shield to himself before continuing along this tunnel.

And the inside of the tunnel was not long. After advancing only about fifty meters, he had reached the end of this tunnel.

Looking at the scene at the end of the tunnel, Wayne immediately discovered the cause of the whole thing.

It turned out that what was connected to the end of this tunnel was a stone wall built with bricks. However, at this time, I don't know if it was the work of the miners, but the stone wall had been broken into a huge gap that allowed people to pass through.

Although Wayne didn't risk going deep, just by exploring the interior from this gap, he found that behind the stone wall should be an underground tomb from an unknown era.

Many coffins carved with exquisite shapes were neatly arranged inside the tomb, which was a large tomb belonging to multi-person burials.

Wayne's skin could even feel the air circulation in the tomb. It was estimated that this tomb had other exits.

Obviously, if he guessed correctly, the cause of this incident should be an excavation accident.

The miners accidentally dug into the outer wall of some unknown underground tomb, didn't consider the consequences at all, or under the instruction of someone, directly destroyed the tomb, attracting the attack of the wraiths inside the tomb.

It was just a pity for that group of soldiers who came to investigate. If someone had reported the full cause of the incident in advance, they would probably have directly commissioned a professional sorcerer to solve this problem, instead of sending those soldiers who had no threat to wraiths to die.

After investigating this intelligence, Wayne didn't continue to investigate deeply, but slowly retreated from this tunnel.

Although this matter hadn't been 100% clarified, the next step was not his work alone.

Ten minutes later, Wayne returned to the ground and told all the intelligence he had investigated to Keira and Triss, who had been waiting there. After the sorceresses heard the intelligence, they were first surprised, and then expressed their contempt for this Baron Kolber.

Obviously, this matter was intentionally concealed by this Baron. He didn't want to bear any responsibility because of his own mistakes, so he concealed the cause of the matter and wanted to treat it as an accident.

However, the two sorceresses wouldn't blame anything. This was not their work. After completing this commission, they would naturally report the truth of the matter to the King as royal advisors.

As for how to deal with it later, it would be decided by King Foltest himself.

After listening to Wayne's report, Keira looked at the witcher with appreciative eyes and praised: "As expected of an excellent witcher, Wayne. If this matter were handed over to those soldiers, it would definitely not have such efficiency, and there would be deaths and injuries."

"Alright, since we know that the enemy is a monster dominated by wraiths, then please give us some more time. After we are ready, we will go to clean up that underground tomb."

In fact, any combat profession was the same as a witcher. If corresponding intelligence was obtained before the battle and targeted strategies were found, then the battle would be twice the result with half the effort.

Just like dealing with wraiths now, if it was confirmed in advance that the enemy was a wraith, everyone would prepare more magic items that could restrain wraiths, and it would be much simpler when cleaning up the tomb later.

Similarly, as a witcher, Wayne also needed to make combat preparations. To deal with these wraiths without entities, he chose the recovery-type Swallow potion, the Wolf potion to increase agility, and the Tawny Owl potion to increase magic recovery.

Originally, he also considered whether to use the Cat potion for dark vision, but after thinking that he was traveling with two sorceresses who could use illumination spells, he decisively abandoned this idea.

Although it wasn't that he couldn't bear the toxicity of the Cat potion, drinking too many potions was not a relaxing experience.

And after he finished meditating and added anti-ghost oil to his Master-level silver sword, Keira and Triss also completed their preparations.

"Wow, Wayne, your face is so terrifying, it's like you're seriously ill, too pale, and there are bloodshot eyes." Keira was very surprised.

"Yes, I have also seen such records in books. Witchers can imitate some of the abilities of monsters through their mutated organs and special potions to strengthen their own power."

"These were the research results of the sorcerers of the witcher order during the witcher order period."

"It's a pity that when the witcher order was broken, much of the knowledge in this area was taken away or burned by some people with ulterior motives."

Seeing Wayne's ugly appearance after drinking the witcher potion, the two sorceresses were slightly surprised, and then began to discuss their knowledge about witchers in a low voice.

Sorcerers in this era were elite talents who combined mages, scientists, researchers, and even doctors, multiple professions in one.

If it could be said that witchers had to undergo ten or twenty years of training before graduation.

Then sorcerers might have to undergo thirty or forty years of knowledge learning and various magic experiments before they graduated.

It could be said that every famous sorcerer was an extremely knowledgeable scholar.

Hearing the discussion between the two sorceresses, Wayne's heart moved, and he thought of Aretuza Academy located on Thanedd Island in Temeria.

The knowledge accumulated by their witchers had indeed lost most of it in a turmoil hundreds of years ago, leading to the current witchers mostly having to rely on the legacy left by the order period to barely survive.

Not only were they split into many schools, but they were also forced to stay away from their hometowns and scattered all over the world. But after so many years, various technologies about witchers not only had no major progress, but gradually became missing and withered due to the death of many witchers.

Perhaps, in the long-established Aretuza Academy, one could find a lot of knowledge helpful to witchers.

However, Wayne only thought about this idea now. At this time, it was the most powerful period of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers, and there were countless strong people in the various academies. They had a lot of precautions against the witcher profession. If they messed around, if they attracted their attention, they might even attract further suppression from the sorcerers.

The three chatted and moved forward, and soon followed the route Wayne came, arriving at the stone wall at the end of the tunnel.

As a man, and also the combat guard of this team, Wayne took the lead and walked at the front of the team.

He reached out and gestured an Aard sign, directly shaking away the other loose bricks on the stone wall, shaking the gap that could originally only allow ordinary people to drill in into a gate large enough to accommodate two people.

And such a big movement seemed to have attracted the vigilance of those wraiths in the underground tomb, and some vague wails began to spread in the underground tomb.

Seeing this, Keira reached out and took out a magic item that looked like an oil lamp from her waist bag.

With the incantations constantly chanted in her mouth and the input of a large amount of magic, the oil lamp that was originally extinguished quickly ignited a kind of ghostly blue flame.

And while the flame was burning, a visible semi-circular blue magic shield followed, centered on Keira.

Seeing this semi-circular, blue magic shield with a diameter of nearly five meters, Triss sighed and said: "Wow! Wraith-repelling shield, is this a magic defensive item you made, Keira?"

"With this shield, before it is shattered, any ghost-type monsters will not be able to get close to us."

Keira raised her chin slightly proudly upon hearing this and said: "Triss, have you forgotten? I got the highest evaluation in the academy in terms of defense studies. Even Dean Margarita can't compare to me in this regard."

Triss nodded appreciatively. Every sorceress who could be sent to the side of various kings was the most excellent graduate of the academy. This was also one of the reasons why the Brotherhood of Sorcerers could be so powerful.

With this layer of defense, she could also safely cast spells inside the shield.

Triss took out a fiery red circular bead that looked like a ruby, placed it in her palm, and said to Wayne, who was standing at the front of the team, with a smile: "Hurry up and go in, Mr. Witcher."

"If we clean up here early, we can take a hot bath when we go home. I'm looking forward to your dinner tonight."

Wayne nodded, looked at the magic items in the hands of the two sorceresses twice, and even as a layman, he could perceive the powerful power of these two items.

And the subsequent battle also confirmed his conjecture. He originally thought that facing a dozen or even dozens of wraiths, it would be a somewhat difficult battle.

But what Wayne didn't expect was that Keira supported that wraith-repelling shield throughout the whole process, and no wraith could break through the shield's defense to attack the three people inside.

And the fiery red bead in Triss's hand, under the drive of her magic, could release various fire magic continuously. Even when facing the siege of five or six wraiths at the same time, these large-scale fire magic could kill those intangible wraiths in a very short time.

Two sorceresses, one defending and one attacking, made Wayne, who was standing in the shield, a decoration. He just gripped the Master-level silver sword and focused on guarding the two sorceresses, preventing any accidents that might happen.

The three of them cleaned the underground tomb tomb by tomb, and it only took half an hour to clean the entire underground tomb, and no accidents happened in the middle.

Such a result made Wayne a bit embarrassed. He made all preparations, drank potions, and applied sword oil, but the result was that he didn't make a single sword move throughout the mission and was carried to victory by two beauties.

At the same time, he also had a deeper understanding of the spellcaster profession of sorcerer.

If it could be said that not making an appointment to fight with a witcher and not letting them make preparations before the battle was the secret to winning a witcher,

then similarly, when dealing with spellcasters, it was best to break their hands or pull out their tongues before they cast magic.

Otherwise, once their spells were completed, the one who died would most likely be you yourself.

Of course, there was one exception, and that was the natural nemesis of spellcasters, dimeritium.

If you carry a large amount of dimeritium on your body and have the opportunity to approach those spellcasters, then even if you are an ordinary soldier, you have the opportunity to overturn these high-and-mighty mage masters.

And from the discussion between Triss and Keira, Wayne knew that this was probably an elven tomb from thousands of years ago. Judging from its structure and style, it should belong to the elven city where Wyzima was originally located, and it belonged to a civilian tomb.

However, due to the long history, the local indigenous elves no longer had inheritance, so it had not been discovered for so long.

Although it certainly didn't have all kinds of wealth like the elven royal tomb, after Keira and Triss discussed it, they still decided to split the found spoils equally among the three, which could be considered not coming in vain.

Of course, as a man who basically didn't exert any effort in the battle, the task of searching all the coffins, searching for burial objects, and collecting the wraith dust fell on Wayne.

However, for this kind of work, Wayne was quite willing. These elves had been dead for thousands of years, and their bones had turned into dust, so he didn't have any psychological burden, but treated it like opening treasure chests, touching for prizes one by one.

It was a pity that this was only a civilian tomb, and because of the ventilation, all the burial objects had weathered, and the preservation was not ideal.

He searched for the spoils for more than an hour, and probably only found gold and silver jewelry worth less than 1,000 orens and some gemstones that had lost their collection value.

Instead, the wraith dust left by the dozens of wraiths had more utilization value and was split equally by the two sorceresses, not counted as spoils.

By dusk, before the sun went down, the three of them completed the mission and returned to Keira's mansion.

And just when the two sorceresses went to the City Hall to receive the reward, Wayne also completed the Expert-level commission received from Keira, obtaining 40 experience points and an Expert-level treasure chest.

He didn't rush to open the treasure chest, but took the little maid Maisie to a high-end food material store nearby to buy all the ingredients needed for dinner.

By the way, he took the time to go home and find Lala, and at the cost of some gifts, let her tell her brother Fitz that the appointment with him at the Fisherman King's pier tonight would be missed and hoped to postpone it for a day.

(End of chapter)