Chapter 313: Vilgefortz

The location where Princess Pavetta was kidnapped was in a primitive forest on the border of the Kingdom of Verden.

In the forest, there was once an abandoned ancient castle, which was said to have been built by a certain royal family of the Kingdom of Verden who loved vanity, costing a lot of manpower and built quite huge.

However, now that hundreds of years had passed, both the parties involved and their descendants had long since vanished in history, leaving only this dilapidated castle behind, alone in the forest, becoming an existence imagined in some stories.

Geralt and others first arrived at a quite remote town in the Kingdom of Verden through a portal. This was a secret passage left by the young palace mage Isha of Cintra, which was not known by the spellcasters of the Kingdom of Verden and could well hide their tracks without alerting the enemy.

After a group of five entered the Kingdom of Verden, they didn't stop at all and immediately followed the direction given by the map and rushed toward the target location.

The time was indeed quite urgent. After simply reporting the relevant situation to Queen Calanthe, even though this Queen was furious and wanted to send an army to wipe out those evil sorcerers and monsters.

But these ideas were all in vain. A large army could not bypass such a long distance in such a short time and march to the Kingdom of Verden, a vassal state of Cintra.

And the information that the corrupted sorcerer Quitetuo disappeared could only be hidden for at most one day.

The enemy wasn't a fool either. Beyond this time, they would definitely be suspicious, and might not even be able to hide it for so long. As long as the other party tried to contact Quitetuo and got no results, they might be suspicious.

Whether it was running away or moving their lair, it would increase the trouble of this operation.

"This is a Dimeritium bracelet. After wearing it, the influence of sorcerers on you will be greatly reduced. You only need to focus your energy on avoiding the attacks of those monsters."

"By the way, remember not to get too close to Lady Yennefer, so as not to affect her spellcasting."

Before starting the action, Geralt handed two blue Dimeritium bracelets to Aragorn and Alex.

He originally didn't intend to let these two teenagers join this battle. After all, although these two were already at a relatively high level of physical fitness for humans, and their swordplay could be considered superb, they hadn't actually undergone mutation experiments, and couldn't even be considered witcher apprentices.

Although the two children weren't the main force of this battle, coming up to fight a combination of a group of monsters and a corrupted sorcerer was indeed quite difficult for them.

If it weren't for the two children insisting on it, he really wanted to leave them in a safe place.

However, for such an action, Geralt wasn't without a plan. At the very least, he wouldn't rush in with people like a greenhorn.

When they arrived at the forest where the destination was located, Geralt hired a local guide in the surrounding village at a high price.

Although the middle-aged man was trembling with fear and his face was pale when he heard their destination, muttering about ghosts haunting there and the monster lair there,

but under the temptation of gold, the man soon overcame his fear and led them through the dense forest to find the huge castle that had been abandoned.

The castle was located near a valley in the forest, and its overall scale was much larger than they had imagined.

Hundreds of years of time had caused the entire castle to appear in multiple places of damage, and green plants had also climbed all over the stone surface, but looking from afar, it still made people feel quite shocked.

Looking at the dim yellow light emanating from the windows in this deep ancient castle, Geralt and others immediately understood that they hadn't found the wrong place. There must be enemies inside.

"The situation inside the ancient castle is unknown now."

"I'll go take a look first to ensure the safety of Princess Pavetta."

"If a battle occurs, come and support me."

Geralt simply explained his plan. Although as the leader of a force, it was inappropriate for him to execute the most dangerous mission every time he fought.

But he really didn't want his friends to risk their lives. After all, from the perspective of strength, many battles were just ordinary to him, but they were indeed quite dangerous to Geralt and others.

The White Wolf was calmer than imagined. After listening to his orders, he didn't raise any objections, just nodded after a few seconds of silence and said:

"Be careful, Geralt."

"If you encounter an accident, use alchemy bombs, and we will rush to support you as soon as possible."

Geralt nodded when he heard this, reached out and patted Geralt's shoulder, touched Aragorn and Alex's hair, then took out an invisibility cloak from the space bracelet, put it on, and sneaked into the ancient castle.

The area of the castle was very large, not only equipped with a huge garden and a surrounding wall of more than two meters, but also some other stone buildings inside. Clearly, its owner had spent a lot of money to build this scale.

With the cover of night, Geralt successfully sneaked to the vicinity of the castle without seeing any enemies.

Now the Witcher Order possessed many sorcerers and endless resources. Every existing witcher was equipped with several quite practical magic props, which was completely different from the past.

Geralt had once taken the invisibility cloak out for several sorcerers to study, but unfortunately, with their ability, they couldn't replicate this extremely practical prop, and they didn't even figure out the principle of its operation.

Otherwise, if every witcher could be equipped with an invisibility cloak, becoming an assassin master would be a quite easy thing. However, even so, the sorcerers also cooperated to develop several props that could strengthen stealth capabilities.

For example, sound-muffling shoes that reduced footsteps, sprays that locked the body's scent, poisons that sealed the throat upon seeing blood, and daggers without any reflection, etc. Even without an invisibility cloak, many witcher masters could rely on their own technology to become assassins who came and went without a trace, killing people invisibly.

After another few minutes, Geralt had sneaked to the vicinity of the castle's outer wall without finding any enemies, which surprised him.

However, after climbing over a dilapidated window and entering the interior of the castle, he immediately found something wrong.

Originally, the castle was empty outside, except for the dim yellow light, without any traces of monsters. As a result, just after entering the interior of the castle, he saw thousands of fully armed undead zombies arranged neatly in the castle hall.

Silently, just like statues, without any movement.

If he hadn't occasionally seen a few short Fallen Ones holding torches wandering in the ranks of these armed zombies, he would have even thought they were statues.

Looking at the number of these armed zombies, Geralt couldn't help but frown. You know, the population of the entire Kingdom of Verden might not be enough for 100,000 people. Even if they gathered the strength of the whole country, they couldn't gather an army of 5,000 people.

This armed zombie monster, combined with other monsters and corrupted sorcerers, as long as the speed was fast enough, it could directly occupy the capital of the Kingdom of Verden before the Kingdom of Verden gathered its army.

It seems that the speed of Hell monsters in the Wizard World was faster than he imagined, and the Dark Brotherhood of Sorcerers might already have the strength to slaughter cities and destroy countries.

Just when he was frowning and thinking about this problem, Geralt's gaze suddenly noticed the armor and weapons of those armed zombies.

They were all standard armor of almost the same style. Although they were made quite roughly and were only half-body iron-inlaid armor that protected the chest and joints,

but from their craftsmanship, they revealed a special feature of assembly-line products. They weren't carefully polished by skilled craftsmen, and the quality was quite new, like products produced not long ago.

Such a scale of armor was difficult for private blacksmith shops in the North to produce in large batches, which made Geralt suspicious, and he immediately placed his suspicion on the Kingdom of Nilfgaard in the South.

Only they, an emerging country where capitalism had begun to sprout and various factories were operating on a scale, had the ability to mass-produce such ordinary-quality assembly-line products.

It seems that when he didn't notice, perhaps the claws of the South had secretly reached into the North, and even began to collude with the Dark Brotherhood of Sorcerers.

It's just that I don't know if this was the personal behavior of Southern sorcerers or the order of that usurper.

With such thoughts, Geralt didn't stay in the hall on the first floor for long, just observed it roughly, and then quickly walked along the stairs toward the high floor of the castle.

Another period of silent sneaking, Geralt walked while observing.

Compared to the dense scene of monsters on the first floor, the floors above were much quieter, and the monsters appearing in the corridors and corners were much more elite.

Not only were there Fallen One wizards holding staves, but also swamp witches who could cast local spells. Besides that, Geralt even found a night wraith floating in mid-air, ugly and terrifying in appearance, in a room.

Clearly, Hell Magic was more attractive to these monsters than he imagined, and could even allow many monsters of different races to live in peace with each other.

If this situation were known to those scholars who studied various monster information hundreds or thousands of years ago, it would definitely surprise them.

However, for Geralt, the situation in the castle didn't have much impact other than making him frown.

But clearly, the existence of so many monsters in the ancient castle was no longer suitable for Geralt and others to participate in the battle. Their strength hadn't reached the level of ignoring quantity.

Rushing into this castle rashly would likely end up being dismembered by monsters.

Geralt was vigilant in his heart, his actions became more cautious, and after grinding for more than ten minutes, he finally bypassed all enemies and arrived at the top floor of the castle.

This was a spacious hall with an overall style similar to a laboratory. There were torches and lamps everywhere on the walls, illuminating the entire hall quite brightly.

And in this hall, in addition to many wooden racks that looked like torture instruments, and many humans who didn't know whether they were dead or alive were tied to them, there were also many experimental beds neatly placed.

However, perhaps because it was night, there weren't many people in the entire experimental hall, or the number of people was extremely limited.

After a search, Geralt finally saw Princess Pavetta, who was tied to an experimental table, wearing only a thin, almost transparent garment, her abdomen bulging, her expression calm, and she seemed to have fallen into a coma.

At the same time, Geralt also saw a man in his thirties with gorgeous clothes, brown hair, and a handsome appearance beside the experimental table.

He was strong, with a calm expression, holding a set of precision experimental instruments, and was focusing on checking the princess's condition on Princess Pavetta, seemingly studying some data.

And at the first sight of this man, Geralt recognized his identity. He was the young talent quite famous in the Wizard Brotherhood, the powerful sorcerer who broke Geralt's legs with a stick in the original work, Vilgefortz.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 314 =====